为什么存在任何事物？是什么决定了事物的正确与错误？上帝存在吗？在试图理解知识、现实和存在的基本性质时，哲学解决了所有事物中最大的一些谜团。许多这样的问题困扰了哲学家几个世纪。哲学的发展是为了质疑人们经常认为理所当然的事情。

Why is there anything at all? What makes things right and wrong? Does God exist? in trying to understand the fundamental nature of knowledge, reality, and existence, Philosophy tackles some of the greatest mysteries of all. Many such questions have puzzled philosophers for centuries. Philosophy developed to question what people often take for granted.

许多哲学问题似乎超出了科学的范围。以道德问题为例。科学家确实可以做出具有道德意义的发现。他们可以制造核武器，或者让我们能够通过选择婴儿的眼睛和头发颜色来设计婴儿，等等。但科学不能告诉我们是否应该使用这些新技术。科学似乎最终仅限于告诉我们事物是怎样的，而道德哲学则关心事物应该如何。哲学研究涉及尽可能地利用我们的推理能力或逻辑思维来弄清什么是真理。它是一种活动：一种学习如何正确思考的好方法——关于任何事情。你在哲学研究中学到的技能在各种领域都很有用，从演讲到谈判重要的商业交易。哲学家也质疑我们的信仰。我们可能没有意识到这一点，但我们都持有许多哲学信仰。当然，其中也包括道德信仰：许多人相信宇宙是由上帝创造的，死后还有某种形式的生命。其他人则持相反观点。我们常常从自己的文化、社区和传统中获得信仰。但这些信仰是可以改变的。不久前，大多数西方人认为拥有奴隶和阻止妇女投票在道德上是可以接受的。现在，我们更了解了。哲学家的职责就是试图确定这些信仰是否正确。在这样做时，哲学家可能会被视为令人讨厌的人。但提出这些问题很重要。毕竟，答案确实很重要。

Many philosophical questions appear to be beyond the scope of science. Take moral questions, for instance. It’s true that scientists can make morally significant discoveries. They can build nuclear weapons, or make it possible for us to design a baby by choosing his or her eye and hair color, and so on. But science cannot tell us whether we ought or ought not to use such new technologies. Science, it seems, is ultimately restricted to telling us how things are, whereas moral philosophy is concerned with how things ought to be. Doing philosophy involves trying to figure out as best we can what is true by using our powers of reason, or logical thought. It is an activity: a great way to learn how to think well—about anything. And the skills you pick up doing philosophy are skills you will find useful in all kinds of areas, from giving a presentation to negotiating an important business deal. Philosophers also question our beliefs. We might not realize it, but we all hold a great many philosophical beliefs. These, of course, include moral beliefs: Many believe the universe was created by God, and that there is some form of life after death. Others believe the opposite. Often, we acquire our beliefs from our cultures, communities, and traditions. But these beliefs can change. Not so long ago, most Westerners thought it was morally acceptable to own slaves, and to prevent women from voting. Now, we know better. It is the role of the philosopher to try to establish whether or not such beliefs are true. In doing so, philosophers may be considered an annoyance. But it is important that we ask these questions. After all, the answers really do matter.

很少有人以全职哲学家的身份谋生，无论是写哲学书籍还是在大学里教书和做研究。然而，学习哲学可以帮助我们培养在许多不同工作中有用的技能，哲学家的职业道路多种多样。此外，很多人只是将哲学视为一种爱好，纯粹是为了享受它本身。

Very few people earn their living as full-time philosophers, either writing philosophical books or teaching and researching in universities. Studying philosophy, however, helps us develop skills that are useful in many different jobs, and philosophers follow a wide variety of career paths. Also, a lot of people simply enjoy philosophy for its own sake, as a hobby.

学术课程

Academic courses

许多学校、学院和大学都开设了哲学课程，可授予正式学位。哲学有时作为其他学科课程的一部分教授，例如政治、经济、神学和心理学。

Many schools, colleges, and universities offer courses in philosophy, leading to formal degrees. Philosophy is sometimes taught as a part of courses in other subjects, such as politics, economics, theology, and psychology.

讨论组

Discussion groups

人们对哲学的兴趣与日俱增，哲学小组也越来越受欢迎，志同道合的人可以在非正式的场合聚在一起讨论哲学。许多地区也开设了晚间课程。

There is a growing interest in philosophy as a hobby, and philosophy groups have become popular, allowing like-minded people to meet and discuss philosophy in an informal setting. Evening classes are also available in many areas.

杂志和博客

Magazines and blogs

有些哲学杂志面向普通读者——这些杂志通常可通过订阅获得，而不是在书店购买。它们也可以在网上找到，还有一些关于哲学的博客。

There are some philosophy magazines aimed at the general reader—these are usually available by subscription rather than at bookstores. They may also be available online, along with a number of blogs about philosophy.

图书

Books

不管你选择如何学习哲学，你都会想在图书馆或书店里寻找哲学家的书籍。还有几本哲学百科全书和词典，其中许多最好的都可以在网上找到。

No matter how you choose to learn about philosophy, you’ll want to browse your library or bookstore for books by philosophers. There are also several encyclopedias and dictionaries of philosophy, and many of the best are available online.

清晰的思维

Clear thinking

哲学就是推理——理性思考。学习哲学，与他人讨论哲学问题，是锻炼思维的好方法，能教会我们清晰、合乎逻辑的思维技巧。

Philosophy is all about reasoning—rational thought. Learning about philosophy, and discussing philosophical problems with others, is good exercise for the mind, and teaches us the skills of clear and logical thinking.

演讲技巧

Presentation skills

哲学辩论是培养论证技巧的好方法。除了为观点提供充分的理由外，令人信服的论证还必须逻辑清晰、语言明确。

Philosophical debate is a good way to develop the skills of presenting an argument. In addition to providing good reasons for an opinion, a convincing argument has to be presented logically, using unambiguous language.

谈判和调解

Negotiating and mediating

哲学的核心技能之一是能够识别论据的优缺点。这通常涉及从两方面看待事物，并在两种对立观点之间找到中间立场。

One of the core skills of philosophy is being able to recognize the strengths and weaknesses of an argument. Often, this involves seeing things from both sides, and finding the middle ground between two opposing views.

解决问题

Problem solving

逻辑尤其能教会我们实用的思考技巧，这些技巧可以帮助我们做出理性的决定。这些技巧有助于我们系统、有条不紊地处理任务，并组织和规划问题的解决方案。

Logic in particular teaches us practical thinking skills, techniques that help us make rational decisions. These are useful in approaching tasks in a systematic, methodical way, and organizing and planning solutions to problems.

独立思考

Independent thinking

最重要的是，哲学教导我们不要简单地接受传统智慧。哲学家要求理性的论证，而不是信仰或偏见，他们既能提出新的想法，也能挑战传统观念。

Above all, philosophy teaches us not simply to accept conventional wisdom. Philosophers demand rational justification rather than faith or prejudice, and can offer new ideas as well as challenge beliefs.

法律

Law

辩论技巧和道德哲学知识在法律界非常有用。许多哲学家已成为律师和法官，以及调解员，他们还为科学、医学和商业提供道德方面的建议。

The skills of argument and a knowledge of moral philosophy are very useful in the legal profession. Many philosophers have become lawyers and judges, as well as mediators, and they also advise on ethics in science, medicine, and business.

公共政策

Public policy

有些哲学家从事政治家、政治顾问或活动家的职业。许多人还在公务员队伍中工作，为政府提供经济、社会和国际政策及其实施方面的建议。

Some philosophers have taken up careers as politicians, political advisers, or activists. Many also work in the civil service, advising the government on economic, social, and international policy, and how it can be implemented.

新闻学

Journalism

记者、调查记者、政治评论员和编辑需要能够迅速抓住新闻的核心，并通过媒体清晰地呈现。哲学提供了新闻职业所需的许多技能。

Reporters, investigative journalists, political commentators, and editors need to be able to get to the heart of a story quickly and present it clearly through the media. Philosophy provides many of the skills required for a career in journalism.

商业

Business

虽然一些哲学家选择成为企业家，但更多的人发现哲学为他们提供了可应用于营销和广告、或商业组织和人力资源的技能。

While some philosophers have chosen to become entrepreneurs, many more have found that philosophy has provided them with skills that can be applied to marketing and advertising, or to business organization and human resources.

心理健康

Mental health

心灵哲学与心理学有着明显的联系，许多心理学家和神经科学家都研究过哲学。一些哲学系的学生还被培养成为心理治疗师和咨询师。

The philosophy of mind has obvious connections with psychology, and many psychologists and neuroscientists have studied philosophy. Some philosophy students have also trained to become psychotherapists and counselors.

教育

Education

除了通常在大学和学院工作的专业哲学家之外，还有许多哲学系的学生从事教育工作，他们既是各种学科的教师，也是教育理论家。

In addition to professional philosophers, who generally work in universities and colleges, there are many students of philosophy working in education, as teachers of a variety of subjects, but also as educational theorists.

好奇是人类的天性。我们需要了解周围的世界和我们在其中的位置，以及我们的思维方式和行为方式。我们对知识的探索需要解释——包括我们如何了解事物以及我们是否能确定我们所知道的东西。

It is human nature to be inquisitive. We have a need to understand the world around us and our place in it, as well as the way we think and behave. Our search for knowledge demands explanations—including explanations of how we come to know things and if we can be sure of what we know.

传统信仰

Traditional beliefs

从远古时代开始，人们就开始思考并试图理解他们所生活的世界。他们寻求解释，尤其是那些影响他们生活的自然现象——例如，季节的变化、植物的生长和死亡、日月的升起和落下，以及星星的运动。对于史前人类来说，这些就像是一种魔法，常常被解释为超自然力量的产物。宗教和神话不断发展，不仅解释了物质世界，还解释了我们的行为方式，这些行为方式都是按照神赐予我们的法则进行的。随着文明的建立，这些传统信仰形成了文化的基础、社会的框架，并几乎毫无疑问地代代相传。但随着社会变得越来越复杂，一些人发现传统不再能满足他们的好奇心——他们不想接受传统信仰，而是想找到自己的答案。

From the very earliest times, people have wondered about and tried to understand the world they live in. They looked for explanations, especially of the natural phenomena that affected their lives—for example, the changing seasons and when plants grow and die, the rising and setting of the sun and moon, and the movements of the stars. For prehistoric people, these were like a kind of magic, and were often explained as the work of supernatural forces. Religions and myths evolved that gave explanations not only of the physical world but also of the way we behave, according to laws given to us by the gods. And as civilizations became established, these traditional beliefs formed the basis of cultures, a framework for society, and were passed on from generation to generation almost unquestioningly. But as societies grew more sophisticated, some people found that tradition no longer satisfied their curiosity—rather than accepting conventional beliefs, they wanted to find their own answers.

合理的解释

Rational explanations

正是出于这种想要了解世界而不是仅仅相信宗教或传统所告诉他们的事物的渴望，第一批哲学家出现在古希腊。他们挑战公认的观念，通过考察世界并运用他们的思考或推理能力来寻求问题的其他答案。在这样做的过程中，他们觉得他们的理性解释将为他们提供知识，而不仅仅是信仰。这些早期的哲学家试图找到世界构成和结构的解释，这种探索演变成各种科学分支。另一方面，后来的哲学家试图提供我们应该如何生活的理性解释，以及现实和我们存在的本质，作为传统信仰的替代品。这种通过推理考察和尝试理解世界的方式，尤其是通过鼓励讨论和辩论，正是哲学的全部，即使在今天，它也经常质疑我们所生活的社会的惯例。

It was from this desire to know about the world, and not just believe what religion or tradition told them, that the first philosophers emerged in ancient Greece. They challenged accepted ideas and sought alternative answers to their questions by examining the world and using their ability to think, or reason. In doing so, they felt that their rational explanations would provide them with knowledge, rather than just belief. These early philosophers tried to find explanations for the makeup and structure of the world, a search that evolved into the various branches of science. Later philosophers, on the other hand, attempted to provide rational explanations of how we should live our lives, and the nature of reality and our existence, as alternatives to traditional beliefs. This way of examining and attempting to understand the world by reasoning, and especially by encouraging discussion and debate, is what philosophy is all about, and even today it often questions the conventions of the society we live in.

丢失的钥匙？

最早的哲学家们对世界和人类生活方式的传统解释提出了挑战。他们寻求其他解释，并用推理以新的方式审视世界。

The earliest philosophers challenged traditional explanations of the world and how we live in it. They sought alternative explanations, and used reasoning to examine the world in a new way.

知识问题

The problem of knowledge

虽然哲学源于人类对知识的渴望，但哲学家们也将注意力转向了知识本身。他们开始觉得，仅仅说“事情就是这样的”，甚至解释我们为什么这么想已经不够了——我们还必须研究我们如何知道这一点。当希腊文明随着雅典城邦的建立而达到顶峰时，哲学家们开始质疑我们说我们知道某事时的意思，以及知识到底是什么。这就是哲学的一个分支——认识论的诞生，它涉及知识的所有方面：我们如何获取知识，我们如何确定我们所知道的东西，以及是否有一些我们永远无法知道的东西。

While philosophy emerged from our human desire for knowledge, philosophers also turned their attention to knowledge itself. They began to feel that it was no longer enough simply to say “that’s the way things are,” or even to explain why we think that—we must also examine how we know that. By the time Greek civilization had peaked with the establishment of the city-state of Athens, philosophers had started to question what we mean when we say we know something, and what knowledge actually is. This was the birth of the branch of philosophy called epistemology, which is concerned with all aspects of knowledge: how we acquire knowledge, how we can be sure of what we know, and if there are some things that we can never know.

起初

IN THE BEGINNING

当古希腊开始建立城邦时，中国和印度也开始发展公民社会。这些国家也产生了原创思想家，包括孔夫子和释迦牟尼，但他们采取了截然不同的方法。东方哲学主要关注如何过上美好的生活以及如何组织社会的问题，哲学与宗教之间的界限不像西方哲学那样明确。

While city-states were being established in ancient Greece, civil societies were also developing in China and India. These too produced original thinkers, including Kong Fuzi (Confucius) and Siddhartha Gautama (the Buddha), but they took a very different approach. In Eastern philosophy, the focus is mainly on questions of how we can live a good life and how to organize society, and the boundaries between philosophy and religion are less clear-cut than in Western philosophy.

参见：你怎么知道的？|你从哪里得到这个想法？

See also: How do you KNOW that? | Where did you get that IDEA?

我们经常说我们知道某件事，但实际上我们只是接受了别人的观点或传统的解释。对于哲学家来说，仅仅接受某件事是真的还不够。他们需要有充分的理由相信它，并有令人信服的论据作为后盾。

We often say that we know something, when in fact we are simply accepting somebody else’s opinion or a conventional explanation. For philosophers, it is not enough just to accept that something is true. They need to have a good reason for believing it, backed up by a convincing argument.

通过理性寻找真理

Finding truths through reason

古希腊早期的哲学家并不满足于传统或宗教的解释，他们试图用推理来理解世界。他们形成了关于世界构成和结构的新观点，并提出了合理的论据来支持他们的理论。由此产生了这样一种观念：要了解某件事，而不是简单地相信它是真的，就需要运用理性，而在此基础上，理性是我们所有真实知识的来源。但并非所有古希腊哲学家都认为他们能仅通过思考来回答所有大问题。例如，色诺芬尼同意理性思考很重要，但他认为理性思考需要外部世界的证据来支持，以防止它只是猜测。

Not satisfied with conventional or religious explanations, early philosophers in ancient Greece used reasoning to try to understand the world. They formed new ideas about the makeup and structure of the world, and came up with reasoned arguments to back up their theories. From this emerged the notion that to know something, rather than simply believe it to be true, requires the use of reason, and that, on this basis, reason is the source of all of our real knowledge. But not all ancient Greek philosophers supposed that they could answer all the big questions just by thinking. Xenophanes, for example, agreed that rational thinking is important, but argued that this needs to be backed up with evidence from the outside world to prevent it from being just speculation.

我们一无所知

We know nothing

渐渐地，哲学讨论的重点从宇宙的本质问题转移到我们如何认识事物的问题：不仅要确定我们所知道的东西，还要知道我们如何认识事物——我们的知识从何而来。大约在公元前 5 世纪雅典成为古希腊文化中心的同时，哲学家们对人类关心的问题（如道德和政治）以及知识问题更加感兴趣。其中最杰出的是苏格拉底，他质疑传统的观念和信仰，利用他的推理能力来确定我们真正知道和不知道的东西。他的方法是让其他人参与讨论他们认为自己知道的事情，但为了消除所有先入为主的观念，他采取了自己一无所知的立场。然后，他挑战与他交谈的人的所有想法和假设，指出他们论点的矛盾和缺点，并表明他们知识的局限性。然而，苏格拉底最有效地展示了理性的力量，它能够揭示假定知识的弱点，以及理性思维如何能够洞察事物的更深层次的知识。

Gradually, the emphasis of philosophical discussion shifted from questions about the nature of the universe to the question of how we know things: not only how we can be sure of what we know, but also how we come to know things—where our knowledge comes from. At about the same time that Athens became the cultural center of ancient Greece in the 5th century BCE, philosophers became more interested in human concerns, such as morality and politics, and the problem of knowledge. Foremost among them was Socrates, who questioned conventional ideas and beliefs, using his ability to reason to establish what we do and don’t really know. His method was to engage other people in discussion about the things they believed they knew, but in order to remove all preconceived ideas, he adopted the standpoint that he himself knew nothing. He then challenged all the ideas and assumptions of the person he was talking with, pointing out the contradictions and shortcomings of their arguments, and showing the limitations of their knowledge. What Socrates demonstrated most effectively, though, was the power of reason to expose the weakness of assumed knowledge, and how rational thought can provide an insight into a deeper knowledge of things.

挑战知识

Challenging knowledge

苏格拉底不仅要挑战当时公认的信念，而且在这样做的过程中，试图寻找我们能够了解的真理。他对道德和政治问题特别感兴趣，并提出诸如“什么是正义？”或“什么是勇气？”之类的问题。尽管大多数人都认为他们知道这些问题的答案，但他表明他们并不知道。与他辩论的许多人都可以提供正义或勇敢行为的例子作为证据来支持他们的信念，但无法找出所有这些事情的共同点。苏格拉底在这种讨论中寻找的不是对正义或勇气的简单定义，而是正义和勇气的真正本质。并且他认为这种本质是我们只有通过推理才能了解的东西。

Socrates set out not just to challenge the accepted beliefs of the time, but, in doing that, to try to find truths that we can have knowledge of. He was particularly interested in issues of morality and politics, and asked questions such as “What is justice?” or “What is courage?” Although most people believed they knew the answers to these questions, he showed that they did not. Many of the people he debated with could provide examples of just or courageous actions as evidence to back up their beliefs, but could not identify what all of these things had in common. What Socrates was looking for in this kind of discussion was not a simple definition of what we mean by justice or courage, but the essence of what justice and courage really are. And he supposed that this essence was something we can only know through reasoning.

质疑一切

苏格拉底认为，我们生来一无所知，但我们在人生的过程中通过质疑每个阶段遇到的信仰和习俗来获得知识。

Socrates believed that we are born knowing nothing, but that we acquire knowledge as we go through life by questioning the beliefs and conventions we encounter at every stage.

最有智慧的人

THE WISEST OF ALL

德尔斐的神谕说，没有人比苏格拉底更聪明，但苏格拉底却始终坚称自己一无所知——他怎么可能是最聪明的人呢？但当他与雅典最伟大的人物讨论哲学时，他意识到他们只是以为自己知道很多。他比他们所有人都聪明，因为他意识到自己知识的局限性。

The oracle at Delphi said that there was no one wiser than Socrates, yet Socrates always maintained he knew nothing—how could he be the wisest man? But when he discussed philosophy with the greatest men of Athens, he realized they only thought they knew a lot. He was wiser than all of them because he was aware of the limitations of his knowledge.

参见：需要知道 |知识来自推理​

See also: The NEED to KNOW | Knowledge comes from REASONING

认识论是哲学中与知识有关的分支，其基本问题之一是我们的知识从何而来。自古希腊以来，哲学家们一直在争论我们是否生来就至少拥有某些事物的知识，或者这些知识是否来自经验。

One of the fundamental questions of epistemology, the branch of philosophy concerned with knowledge, is where our knowledge comes from. Ever since ancient greek times, philosophers have argued about whether we are born with knowledge of at least some things, or if that knowledge comes from experience.

两种思想流派

Two schools of thought

关于我们如何获得知识的理论在哲学史上的大部分时间里将哲学家们的观点大致分为两个不同的阵营。第一阵营的人认为我们生来就具有推理能力，正是这种天生的能力让我们能够获得知识。理性主义认为推理是我们知识的主要来源，认为现实是由真理组成的，我们可以通过推理发现真理。另一方面，第二阵营的人则认为我们没有天生的能力或知识，我们的知识是从我们对外部世界的经验中习得的。这种观点被称为经验主义，认为我们通过感官收集的信息是知识的主要来源。

Theories of how we come to have knowledge of things have divided philosophers’ opinions roughly into two different camps throughout much of the history of philosophy. Those in the first camp have argued that we are born with an ability to reason, and it is that innate ability that allows us to acquire knowledge. Rationalism, the view that reason is the main source of our knowledge, regards reality as consisting of truths, which we can discover by reasoning. Those in the second camp, on the other hand, have argued that we have no innate abilities or knowledge, and that our knowledge is learned from our experience of the world outside us. This view, known as empiricism, considers the information we gather through our senses to be the primary source of knowledge.

有什么想法吗？

柏拉图和理性主义者认为我们生来就拥有知识，我们可以通过推理获得这些知识。但亚里士多德和经验主义者则认为我们通过感官获得有关外部世界的所有知识。

Plato and the rationalists believed that we are born with knowledge, which we can retrieve through reasoning. But Aristotle and the empiricists argued that we acquire all our knowledge of the outside world through our senses.

发现天生的知识

Discovering innate knowledge

古希腊早期哲学家强调推理的力量。他们认为知识只能通过推理获得。柏拉图通过讲述苏格拉底与一个从未学过几何的奴隶男孩讨论几何问题的故事证明了这一点。通过观察苏格拉底在沙子上画图，男孩明白了如何通过推理解决这个问题。苏格拉底没有告诉他答案，但男孩知道他已经找到了解决方案。柏拉图认为这个男孩没有问题或解决方案的经验，并得出结论，他通过推理获得的是他已经拥有的知识——天生的知识。他提出，我们生来就对某些真理有了解，这些真理存在于一个与感官世界不同的“思想世界”中。这些真理是我们所有知识的来源，而不是我们用感官体验到的东西。

Among early philosophers in ancient Greece, the emphasis was on the power of reasoning. They believed that knowledge could be acquired through reason alone. Plato demonstrated this by telling the story of Socrates discussing a problem in geometry with a slave boy who had never learned geometry. By watching Socrates drawing diagrams in the sand, the boy understood how the problem could be solved by reasoning. Socrates had not told him the answer, but the boy knew he had discovered the solution. Plato argued that the boy had no experience of the problem or its solution, and concluded that it was knowledge he already had—innate knowledge—which he accessed by reasoning. We are born with knowledge of certain truths, he proposed, which exist in a “world of ideas,” separate from the world of the senses. These truths are the source of all our knowledge, rather than what we experience with our senses.

与现实的联系

A link to reality

虽然柏拉图的知识观念在几个世纪中被许多哲学家所接受，但他的一位学生却提出了截然不同的观点。亚里士多德不认为我们拥有天生的知识。相反，他认为我们生来一无所知，我们的知识建立在我们从世界经验中学到的东西之上。中世纪之后，随着基于观察（或经验）而非理论（对已知事物进行推理）的科学发现的兴起，这种经验主义论点再次浮出水面。17 世纪，勒内·笛卡尔回归柏拉图的思想，引起了约翰·洛克的回应，他和亚里士多德一样，拒绝了理性主义的天生知识观念。洛克是最重要的经验主义哲学家之一，他认为，我们对外部世界的知识来自我们对它的经验，而我们的思想与外部世界之间唯一的直接接口就是我们的感官。我们可以用理性来合理化来自感官的信息并形成思想，但任何不是源自感官体验的事物就与外部现实没有任何联系，也不能给我们提供任何有关它的知识。

While Plato’s ideas of knowledge were accepted by many philosophers for several centuries, one of his pupils offered a very different view. Aristotle did not accept that we have innate knowledge. Instead, he believed that we are born knowing nothing, and that our knowledge is built on what we learn from our experience of the world. This empirical argument resurfaced after the medieval period, with the rise of scientific discoveries based on observation (or experience), rather than theorizing (reasoning about what we know). René Descartes returned to Plato’s ideas in the 17th century, prompting a reaction from John Locke, who, like Aristotle, rejected the rationalist notion of innate knowledge. One of the foremost empiricist philosophers, Locke believed that knowledge of the world outside us comes from our experience of it, and the only direct interface between our minds and the outside world is our senses. We can use reason to rationalize the information from our senses and formulate ideas, but anything that does not originate from sensory experience has no link with external reality, and can give us no knowledge of it.

新想法

NEW IDEAS

柏拉图和亚里士多德都建立了哲学学校，即学院和吕克昂学院，目的不是为了教授他们特定的观点，而是为了激发哲学讨论。尽管哲学家们对知识的原始来源存在分歧，但几乎普遍认为，新思想是通过推理，尤其是哲学论证和辩论而产生的。

Both Plato and Aristotle founded schools of philosophy, the Academy and the Lyceum, not to teach their particular point of view, but to inspire philosophical discussion. Although philosophers disagree about the original source of knowledge, it is almost universally accepted that it is through reasoning, and especially philosophical argument and debate, that new ideas emerge.

参见：不要相信你的感觉|知识来自推理|我们从经验中学习

See also: Don’t trust your SENSES | Knowledge comes from REASONING | We learn from EXPERIENCE

我们倾向于认为，我们的感官可以让我们相当准确地了解周围的世界——“眼见为实”。但我们也知道，感官也可能被欺骗——例如，视觉错觉。这是否意味着感官是一种不可靠的知识来源？如果感官会被欺骗，也许我们就不能相信从感官那里学到的任何东西了。

We tend to accept that our senses give us a fairly accurate idea of the world around us—“seeing is believing”. But we also know that they can be fooled—for example, by optical illusions. Does this make senses an unreliable source of knowledge? if they can be deceived, maybe we can’t trust anything we learn from them.

不完美的世界

An imperfect world

柏拉图是第一批探讨我们的感官作为知识来源有多不可靠的问题的哲学家之一。像他的导师苏格拉底一样，他试图表明，人们认为理所当然的许多事情——他们认为自己知道的事情——都是基于不可靠的来源。他认为，不仅我们的感官经常让我们失望，而且我们生活和用感官体验的世界也是不完美的。例如，当我们看到纸上画的圆圈时，我们会认出它是一个圆圈。但它不是一个完美的圆圈——无论它画得多么仔细或印刷得多么精细，我们生活的世界中都不可能存在完美的圆圈。柏拉图说，在我们的世界中，没有任何东西以完美、理想的形式存在。这是一个虚幻的世界，由不完美的事物组成，我们通过感官了解到的知识也一定是不完美的。

One of the first philosophers to tackle the problem of how untrustworthy our senses are as a source of knowledge was Plato. Like his mentor, Socrates, he set out to show that many of the things that people take for granted—the things they think they know—are based on unreliable sources. He argued that not only do our senses often let us down, but also that the world we live in and experience with our senses is imperfect. For example, when we see a circle drawn on a piece of paper, we recognize it as a circle. But it is not a perfect circle—no matter how carefully it is drawn or printed, a perfect circle cannot exist in the world we live in. Nothing, Plato said, exists in its perfect, ideal form in our world. It is an illusory world, made up of imperfect versions of things, and what we learn about it through our senses must also be imperfect knowledge.

我们的感官可能会被欺骗

Our senses can be tricked

后来，法国哲学家和数学家勒内·笛卡尔也提出了感官可能欺骗我们的观点。他意识到，有时感官会给我们错误的印象——例如，一根直棍子放在一杯水中看起来是弯曲的。如果我们知道感官可能不可靠，那么完全信任感官就是错误的——我们用感官体验到的一切可能都是错误的。甚至可能是我们在睡觉，我们所经历的世界只不过是一场梦，或者上帝或某种邪恶的力量让我们相信一些并不真实的事情。但如果是这样的话，我们就永远无法确切地知道任何事情。但笛卡尔随后表明，有一件事是他可以肯定的：为了被欺骗，他必须存在，并且作为一个思考的东西而存在。所以，虽然他的感官不可信，但他可以肯定他作为一个能够思考和推理的东西而存在。

The idea that our senses may be deceiving us was later taken up by the French philosopher and mathematician René Descartes. He realized that sometimes our senses give us a false impression—a straight stick in a glass of water appears to be bent, for example. And if we know that they can be unreliable, it would be wrong to trust them completely—everything that we experience with our senses might be false. It might even be that we are asleep, and that the world we are experiencing is no more than a dream, or that God or some mischievous power is making us believe things that are not really true. If that is the case, though, we can never know anything for sure. But Descartes then showed that there was one thing he could be sure of: In order to be deceived, he must exist, and exist as a thing that thinks. So, although his senses could not be trusted, he could be sure he existed as something that was capable of thinking and reasoning.

只有我们经历的事情才存在

Only the things we experience exist

尽管许多 17 世纪的哲学家接受了笛卡尔的论证，但并非所有人都同意。有些人，尤其是英国人，承认我们的感官可能不可靠，但相信感官是我们知识的唯一来源。我们具有推理能力，但这并不能为我们提供知识——我们利用推理能力来理解来自感官的信息。我们只能了解我们体验到的事物，而且我们只能通过感官来体验这些事物。乔治·贝克莱主教将这种经验主义观点发挥到了极致。我们从对事物的体验中获得知识，但他认为，我们所能体验到的只是我们头脑中对事物的想法。我们没有任何真正的理由相信除了这些想法之外还存在其他东西。我们唯一可以确定存在的东西是想法和感知它们的头脑——根据贝克莱的说法，没有任何物质存在。

Although many 17th-century philosophers accepted Descartes’s argument, not everybody agreed. Some, especially in Britain, accepted that our senses can be unreliable, but believed that they are the only source of our knowledge. We have a power of reasoning, but this does not provide us with knowledge—it is what we use to make sense of the information coming to us from our senses. We can only know about things that we experience, and we can only experience these things through our senses. This view, empiricism, was taken to an extreme by Bishop George Berkeley. We get our knowledge from our experience of things, but, he suggested, all we can ever experience is the ideas of those things in our minds. We don’t have any real grounds for believing that anything exists other than those ideas. The only things whose existence we can be sure of are ideas and the minds that perceive them—according to Berkeley, nothing material exists.

消失的世界

有些哲学家认为我们只能通过感官获取知识。乔治·贝克莱甚至怀疑任何物质的存在——如果我们无法感知身后的东西，我们怎么知道它们存在呢？

Some philosophers believed that we can only gain knowledge through our senses. George Berkeley went so far as to doubt the existence of anything material—if we can’t sense things behind us, how can we know they even exist?

欺骗的魔鬼

THE DECEIVING DEMON

勒内·笛卡尔想想象一种情况，在这种情况下，他绝对不可能相信自己的感官告诉他的任何事情。为了做到这一点，他设计了一个思想实验——一个假想的情况——在这个实验中，一个邪恶的魔鬼有能力欺骗他，让他相信一些事情，即使那不是真的。

René Descartes wanted to imagine a situation in which it would be absolutely impossible to trust anything his senses were telling him. To do this, he devised a thought experiment—an imaginary situation—in which an evil demon had the power to deceive him and make him believe something, even though it was not true.

参见：您怎么知道的？|您从哪里得到这个想法？|知识来自推理|我们从经验中学习|什么是真实的？

See also: How do you KNOW that? | Where did you get that IDEA? | Knowledge comes from REASONING | We learn from EXPERIENCE | What is REAL?

虽然我们似乎可以通过所见、所闻、所触、所尝和所闻来了解世界，但我们的感官并不完美，它们给我们的现实概念也不完美。但我们还有另一种能力，即运用理性思考的能力，许多哲学家认为这是更可靠的知识来源。

Although it seems as though we find out about the world from what we see, hear, touch, taste, and smell, our senses are not perfect, and they give us an imperfect idea of reality. But we have another faculty, our ability to use rational thought, which many philosophers see as a more reliable source of knowledge.

完美阴影

柏拉图认为，尽管我们可以辨别圆形和正方形，但它们只是完美形状的不完美反映。我们生活的世界中并不存在完美的圆形和正方形。

Plato believed that although we can identify circles and squares, for example, these are imperfect reflections of perfect forms. Perfect circles and squares do not exist in the world we live in.

所有物体都有理想形态

All objects have an ideal form

我们所体验的世界是虚假的，这一观点是柏拉图哲学的核心。他认为，我们的感官只是给我们一种现实的印象，只有通过推理或逻辑思维，我们才能了解事物的真实本质。他的导师苏格拉底曾问过“什么是正义？”和“什么是美德？”等问题，试图找到它们的本质。苏格拉底并没有简单地指出体现正义或美德的例子，而是认为这些事物的理想形式一定存在。柏拉图进一步阐述了这一观点。他认为，不仅有正义和美德等抽象事物的理想形式，而且也有物体的理想形式，我们用感官体验到的只是这些形式的不完美反映。例如，当我们看到一把椅子时，我们会认出它是一把椅子，尽管世界上有各种各样的椅子。他认为这是因为我们心中有一个理想的椅子的概念，而我们看到的椅子是这种理想形式的一个例子——一个不完美的“复制品”。

The idea that what we experience of the world is deceptive is central to the philosophy of Plato. He argued that our senses merely give us an impression of reality, and that it is only by reasoning, or thinking logically, that we can gain knowledge of the true nature of things. His mentor, Socrates, had asked questions such as “What is justice?” and “What is virtue?” to try to find their nature or essence. Rather than simply point out instances that exemplified justice or virtue, Socrates thought that an ideal form of these things must exist. Plato took this idea further. He believed that there are not only ideal forms of abstract things such as justice and virtue, but that there are ideal forms of objects too, and what we experience with our senses are just imperfect reflections of those forms. For example, when we see a chair, we recognize it as a chair even though there are all kinds of different chairs in the world. He argued that this is because we have an idea in our minds of an ideal chair, and the chair we see is an example—an imperfect “copy”—of that ideal form.

思想的世界

The world of ideas

柏拉图解释说，这些完美形式的事物确实存在，但存在于一个与我们生活的世界不同的世界。我们的世界只包含理想形式的不完美影子。但是，尽管这个理念世界（或他所说的形式）超越了空间和时间，我们仍然可以接触到它，因为我们生来就具备这些完美理念的知识。例如，我们可以识别一个三角形，即使它的边可能不是完全笔直的，因为我们的头脑中有一个完美三角形是什么样子的先天概念。此外，通过推理，我们可以算出该三角形的三个角加起来是 180°，是一条直线，并且知道这是真的。柏拉图认为我们的日常世界是虚幻的（不是真实的），并认为真正的现实只存在于理念世界中。虽然我们的感官给我们描绘了一个不完美的影子世界，但只有通过推理才能获得对现实的真正了解。

Plato explained that these perfect forms of things actually exist, but in a world separate from the world we live in. Our world contains only imperfect shadows of the ideal forms. But although this world of ideas (or forms, as he called them) is outside of space and time, we can have access to it because we are born with a knowledge of those perfect ideas. We can, for instance, recognize a triangle, even though its sides may not be perfectly straight, because we have an innate idea in our minds of what a perfect triangle looks like. Furthermore, by reasoning, we can work out that the three angles of that triangle add up to 180°, a straight line, and know that it is true. Plato considered our everyday world to be illusory (not real), and thought that true reality exists only in the world of ideas. And while our senses give us an imperfect picture of a world of shadows, true knowledge of reality can only be acquired through reasoning.

二加二永远等于四

Two plus two always equals four

柏拉图认为理性思维是我们知识的主要来源，这一观点也是勒内·笛卡尔在 17 世纪开创的哲学方法的核心。笛卡尔认为，由于我们的感官可能会被欺骗，我们真正能知道的东西只有通过推理才能学到的东西。作为一名成就卓著的数学家，他认识到数学真理，尤其是几何学中的真理，可以纯粹通过理性思维来发现——通过从一个真理到另一个真理的逻辑步骤得出结论。他还认为，宇宙中的一切都有逻辑结构，可以用同样的方式发现。这种观点被称为理性主义，尤其受到追随笛卡尔脚步的数学家的青睐，包括本尼迪克特斯·斯宾诺莎和戈特弗里德·莱布尼茨。在 17 和 18 世纪，数学取得了巨大进步，理性主义成为欧洲哲学的主导方法。

Plato’s notion that rational thought is the chief source of our knowledge was also at the heart of the philosophical approach started by René Descartes in the 17th century. Descartes took the view that, because our senses can be deceived, the only things we can truly know are those we have learned from reasoning. As an accomplished mathematician, he recognized that mathematical truths, especially in geometry, can be discovered purely using rational thought—by working in logical steps from one truth to another to reach a conclusion. He also believed that everything in the universe has a logical structure, which can be discovered in the same way. Rationalism, as this view came to be known, appealed especially to mathematicians, including Benedictus Spinoza and Gottfried Leibniz, who followed in Descartes’s footsteps. In the 17th and 18th centuries, a period of great advances in mathematics, rationalism became the dominant approach to philosophy in Europe.

柏拉图的洞穴

PLATO’S CAVE

为了解释他的理念世界理论，柏拉图讲了一个囚徒被关在山洞里的故事，囚徒背对着山洞入口。他们身后是一团火，火把物体的影子投射到山洞的后壁上。对于囚徒来说，这些影子是他们唯一能理解的现实，除非他们能自由地转过身来，意识到这些只是真实物体的影子。

To explain his theory of the world of ideas, Plato told the story of prisoners held in a cave with their backs to the entrance. Behind them is a fire, which casts shadows of objects onto the back wall of the cave. For the prisoners, these shadows are the only reality they understand, unless they can free themselves to turn around and realize they are only the shadows of real objects.

参见：你怎么知道的？|不要相信你的感觉

See also: How do you KNOW that? | Don’t trust your SENSES

虽然历史上许多哲学家认为推理是我们知识的主要来源，但其他人则认为我们对世界的了解主要来自经验。我们生来一无所知，而是通过感官获取知识。

While many philosophers throughout history have thought that reasoning is the main source of our knowledge, others have argued that what we know about the world comes chiefly from experience. We are born knowing nothing, and acquire knowledge through the use of our senses.

一片空白

A blank slate

从古希腊开始，哲学就依靠理性思维来提供答案和解释。推理被认为非常重要——比通过我们不完美的感官获得的经验更重要——以至于柏拉图认为我们所有的知识都来自理性。然而，其他哲学家不同意，他们认为我们对世界的体验对于确定真理和获取知识也很重要。亚里士多德的观点几乎与柏拉图完全相反。他说，当我们出生时，我们的思想就像一块没有写任何东西的石板，我们通过对这个世界的体验——我们看到、听到、触摸、品尝和闻到的东西——来建立我们对这个世界的知识。

From its beginnings in ancient Greece, philosophy relied upon rational thought to provide answers and explanations. Reasoning was considered so important—more important than experience through our imperfect senses—that Plato thought that all our knowledge comes from reason. Other philosophers, however, disagreed, and felt that our experience of the world is also important in establishing truth and acquiring knowledge. And Aristotle took almost totally the opposite view from Plato. When we are born, he said, our minds are like a slate with nothing written on it, and we build up our knowledge of the world we live in from our experience of it—what we see, hear, touch, taste, and smell.

拼凑起来

从我们养过的许多狗的经验来看，我们可以识别出赋予它们“狗性”的特征，例如毛发或尾巴。这种“形态”是所有狗的共同特征，即使只有部分可见，也能帮助我们识别狗。

From our experience of many dogs, we can recognize the characteristics that give them their “dogginess,” such as fur or a tail. This “form” is common to all dogs, and helps us identify a dog even when it is only partly visible.

事物的本质

The essence of things

亚里士多德认为，我们所处的世界所经历的事物并非如柏拉图所认为的那样，是存在于另一个世界的理想形式的不完美版本。我们不是天生就对某事物的完美形式有想法，然后认识到它的不完美例子，而是从我们对该事物各种实例的经验中，建立起对是什么造就了它的想法。例如，通过观察许多狗，我们了解到所有狗都有各种共同点。这些东西构成了亚里士多德所说的狗的“形式”，即它的本质，它不存在于另一个世界，而是存在于每只狗的实例中。正是我们对事物特定实例的经验让我们了解了它们的本质——不仅是自然界中的物体，还有正义和美德等概念。例如，在出生时，我们没有天生的对错观念，但我们会学会识别它们的实例所具有的共同品质，并建立对它们本质的理解。

Aristotle argued that the things we experience in the world we live in are not, as Plato thought, imperfect versions of ideal forms existing in a separate world. Rather than having an innate idea of the perfect form of something, and then recognizing imperfect examples of it, we build up an idea of what makes it what it is from our experience of various instances of that thing. For example, from seeing many dogs, we learn various things all dogs have in common. These things make up what Aristotle calls the “form” of a dog, its essence, which does not exist in a separate world, but is present in each instance of a dog. It is our experience of particular instances of things that gives us knowledge of their essential nature—not just objects in the natural world, but also concepts such as justice and virtue. At birth, we have no innate ideas of right and wrong, for example, but we learn to recognize the qualities that instances of them have in common and build an understanding of what they essentially are.

经验带来知识

With experience comes knowledge

亚里士多德认为经验是我们知识的主要来源，这一观点影响了科学的发展，尤其是在中世纪末期，当时重大的科学发现都是通过观察和实验取得的。虽然勒内·笛卡尔等理性主义哲学家受到数学抽象推理的启发，但其他人将自然科学知识的增长归因于经验。这种观点被称为经验主义，在约翰·洛克等英国哲学家中很流行。和亚里士多德一样，他认为我们生来没有知识，我们所知道的一切都来自我们感官收集的信息。我们逐渐将这些信息组织起来，形成对世界的总体看法，通过将事物关联起来形成复杂的思想，并发展出将推理应用于我们所经历事物的能力。

Aristotle’s notion that experience is the main source of our knowledge influenced the growth of science, especially at the end of the Middle Ages when major scientific discoveries were made through observation and experimentation. While rationalist philosophers such as René Descartes were inspired by the abstract reasoning of mathematics, others attributed the growth of knowledge in the natural sciences to experience. This view, known as empiricism, was popular among British philosophers such as John Locke. Like Aristotle, he believed that we are born with no knowledge, and that everything we know comes from the information gathered by our senses. We gradually organize that information to form a general view of the world, by associating things to form complex ideas, and developing our ability to apply reason to what we experience.

自然爱好者

NATURE LOVER

亚里士多德是一位敏锐的博物学家，他对野生动物进行了细致的研究，将事物分为不同的植物和动物群体。他通过识别某些特征来组织这些类别，例如动物是否可以飞或游泳，以及它是否有羽毛、鳞片或毛皮。然后，他将事物归类为“科”，这些科可以通过其共同特征来识别。

Aristotle was a keen naturalist who made a detailed study of wildlife, classifying things into different groups of plants and animals. He organized these categories by identifying certain characteristics, such as whether an animal can fly or swim, and whether it has feathers, scales, or fur. He then grouped things together in “families,” recognizable by their common characteristics.

参见：不要相信你的感觉|知识来自推理

See also: Don’t trust your SENSES | Knowledge comes from REASONING

哲学家们并不简单地接受陈述为真，而是质疑是否有理由相信它们是真的。怀疑是哲学中的一个有用工具，有助于确定什么是确定的，什么是不确定的。但是，有什么东西是我们可以确定的呢？

Philosophers do not simply accept statements as true, but challenge whether or not there are grounds for believing that they are true. Doubt is a useful tool in philosophy, helping to establish what is certain, and what is not. But is there anything about which we can be certain?

我们能够确定什么？

What can we be certain of?

自苏格拉底时代以来，哲学家们一直在争论我们是否能确定我们所知道的东西，或者我们是否能知道任何东西。苏格拉底本人认为，拥有知识是可能的，但为了得出这个结论，他必须从自己一无所知的立场出发。然后，他试图通过与人们讨论问题来获取知识。通过质疑他们认为自己知道的一切，他能够指出他们信仰中的不一致和矛盾之处。后来的一群希腊哲学家，即怀疑论者，认为我们无法确定或了解任何事情。但并非所有哲学家都持如此极端的观点。有些人采取怀疑的立场来帮助他们确定我们可以肯定知道的东西。他们使用怀疑作为一种工具——将其应用于所有信念以发现哪些是确定的。虽然一些怀疑论者仍然认为对任何事物的绝对知识都是不可能的，但其他人认为可以知道某些事情，但不能知道其他事情。任何哲学探究都需要一定程度的怀疑，直到你有令人信服的论据或证据证明某件事是毫无疑问的真实。

Philosophers since the time of Socrates have debated whether we can be certain of what we know, or even if we can know anything at all. Socrates himself took the view that it was possible to have knowledge, but in order to reach this conclusion he had to start from the standpoint that he knew nothing. He then tried to gain knowledge by discussing issues with people. By questioning everything that they thought they knew, he was able to point out the inconsistencies and contradictions in their beliefs. A later group of Greek philosophers, the skeptics, supposed that we cannot be certain of, or know about, anything. But not all philosophers have taken such an extreme view. Some have taken a skeptical stance to help them establish what we can know for sure. They use doubt as a tool—applying it to all beliefs to discover which are certain. Although some skeptics still maintain that absolute knowledge of anything is impossible, others believe that it is possible to know some things, but not others. And a degree of skepticism is necessary for any philosophical enquiry, until you have a convincing argument or evidence that something is true beyond reasonable doubt.

我不怀疑我的存在

I don’t doubt that I exist

勒内·笛卡尔采取了怀疑论者的方法来寻找他哲学的坚实基础——不容置疑的东西。他提出了一个假想的情况，一个怀疑论的假设，一个邪恶的魔鬼欺骗了他，以至于他怀疑他的感官告诉他的一切。在这样做的过程中，他实际上站在了一个彻头彻尾的怀疑论者的立场上，怀疑一切事物的真实性。但他意识到，因为他能够怀疑一切，所以他必须存在才能进行怀疑。他存在的事实是笛卡尔发现的第一件他无法怀疑的事情——这是一个不容置疑的真理，他可以用它来建立他的论点。

René Descartes took the approach of a skeptic in order to see if he could find a solid base for his philosophy—something that could not be doubted. He came up with an imaginary situation, a skeptical hypothesis, in which an evil demon was deceiving him to the extent that he doubted everything his senses told him. In doing so, he effectively took the standpoint of an out-and-out skeptic, doubting the truth of absolutely everything. But he realized that because he was able to doubt everything, he must exist in order to do the doubting. The fact of his existence was the first thing Descartes found that he could not doubt—it was an undoubtable truth, which he could use to build his arguments upon.

运用你的常识

Use your common sense

一个世纪后，苏格兰哲学家大卫·休谟也采取了怀疑态度。作为一名经验主义者，他认为我们通过感官获得知识，但他也意识到这些感官并不完美，可能会给我们提供错误的信息。同样，他认识到逻辑推理同样不可靠，并得出结论，我们无法绝对确定地知道任何事情。例如，他认为不可能以太阳过去总是升起为由证明我们明天会升起的信念。但他承认我们不得不相信太阳会升起。休谟还认为，我们应该“根据证据来判断我们的信念”，当有充分的证据支持我们所相信的事情时，我们就相信，当没有充分的证据支持我们所相信的事情时，我们就怀疑。例如，奇迹的证据很少，任何声称奇迹已经发生的说法，违背自然法则，都不太可能是真的。更可能的解释是，我们的感官在欺骗我们，或者告诉我们奇迹的人在欺骗我们。

A century later, Scottish philosopher David Hume also adopted a skeptical approach. As an empiricist, he thought that we acquire our knowledge through experience via our senses, but he also realized that these are not perfect, and may give us false information. In the same way, he recognized that logical reasoning was equally unreliable, and concluded that we can’t know anything with absolute certainty. For example, he thought it was impossible to justify our belief that the sun will rise tomorrow, on the basis that it has always risen in the past. But he accepted that we cannot help but believe the sun will rise. Hume also reasoned that we should “proportion our beliefs to the evidence,” believing when there is good evidence to support what we believe, and doubting when there is not. The evidence for miracles, for instance, is poor, and any claim that a miracle has occurred, contrary to the laws of nature, is unlikely to be true. The more likely explanation is that our senses are deceiving us, or the person telling us about the miracle is doing so.

无限回归

INFINITE REGRESS

如果我们质疑一个陈述是否正确，我们实际上是在问它是否有充分的论据。问题是，任何支持它的论据都会涉及其他陈述——怀疑论者会说这些陈述也是值得怀疑的。为了支持这些陈述，我们提供了更多陈述，这些陈述也是值得怀疑的。这个永无止境的过程被称为无限回归。

If we question whether a statement is true or not, we are asking if there is a good argument for it. The trouble is, any argument supporting it will involve other statements—which a skeptic will say can also be doubted. And to back these up, we offer yet more statements, which can be doubted too. This never-ending process is known as infinite regress.

参见：你怎么知道的？|不要相信你的感觉

See also: How do you KNOW that? | Don’t trust your SENSES

我们以为自己知道很多事情。但也许事情没那么简单——我们可能会误以为某件事并非事实，或者接受别人告诉我们的事情，而不去检查是否有理由相信它。问题是，我们什么时候才真正知道某件事？

We think we know a lot of things. But maybe it isn’t that simple—we could mistakenly believe something that turns out not to be true, or accept as fact something somebody has told us, without checking whether there’s any reason to believe it. The question is, when do we really know something?

信仰还是知识？

Belief or knowledge?

我们在谈论宗教信仰时经常使用信仰这个词：宗教信徒信仰一个或多个神，相信圣经中的内容。在哲学中，我们研究我们所相信的东西是否真的是事实。哲学家承认，我们将许多事情视为真理——事实上，我们的许多信念可能确实是真理。但这并不意味着我们知道。人们常常声称他们“就是知道”某事，虽然他们可能是对的，但我们本能地认为他们实际上并不知道，因为他们无法给出相信它的好理由。其他人确实给出了相信他们所做之事的理由，但他们的理由并不是很好。再说一次，说他们真的不知道似乎是正确的。

We often use the word belief when talking about religious faith: Members of a religion believe in a god or gods, and believe what is written in their holy scriptures. In philosophy, we investigate whether or not what we believe is really true. Philosophers acknowledge that we accept many things as true—and many of our beliefs may, in fact, be true. But that doesn’t mean we know, however. People often claim that they “just know” something, and while they may be right, we instinctively feel that they don’t actually know it because they cannot give a good reason for believing it. Other people do give reasons for believing what they do, but their reasons are not very good. Again, it seems right to say that they don’t really know.

欺骗性的外表

沿着这条路开车，你可能会有理由相信这些房子是真的，因为从正面看，它们看起来很真实。但事实上，这些房子是假的，所以这不是一个真正的信念。

Driving down this road, you might be justified in believing that these houses are real because, from the front, they look real. But the houses are, in fact, fake, so this is not a true belief.

合理的真实信念

Justified true belief

柏拉图是第一批试图研究知与信究竟有何区别的哲学家，他将知识定义为“合理的真实信念”。要了解某件事，我们必须相信它是真的，而且我们必须有充分的理由相信它是真的，但它也必须确实是真的。例如，我可能真的相信圣诞老人存在，我有理由相信这一点，因为我见过他留下的礼物，但我们不能说我知道他存在，因为实际上他并不存在——这不是一个真实的信念。或者，我可能真的相信有一天我会中彩票，事实上这可能是真的，但我没有理由相信这一点，所以我不能说我知道它。要成为真正的知识，我的信念必须既真实又合理。

One of the first philosophers to try to examine exactly what distinguished knowing from believing was Plato, who defined knowledge as “justified true belief.” To know something, we must believe it to be true, and we must have good reason for believing it is true, but it must also actually be true. For example, I might truly believe that Santa Claus exists, and I’m justified in believing it because I’ve seen the presents he leaves, but we can’t say that I know he exists because, in reality, he doesn’t—it isn’t a true belief. Alternatively, I might genuinely believe that I’ll win the lottery one day, which might, in fact, turn out to be true, but I have no justification for believing that, so again, I can’t say that I know it. To be real knowledge, my belief must be both true and justified.

盖梯尔问题

The Gettier problem

大多数哲学家都接受柏拉图将知识定义为经过论证的真实信念，直到 20 世纪 60 年代，埃德蒙·盖蒂尔 (Edmund Gettier) 指出，这种信念并不总是能提供令人满意的解释。他举了几个例子，说明我们本能地意识到某人并不真正了解某事，即使该人的信念既真实又经过论证。例如，我约好去我的朋友苏家见面，当我到达时，我透过窗户看到她坐在厨房里。事实上，我看到的不是苏，而是她的同卵双胞胎姐妹——苏实际上在另一个房间里。我相信苏在家是真的，我有充分的理由相信这一点，因为我确信我见过她，但说我知道她在家是错误的——我不知道。诸如此类的例子被称为“盖蒂尔问题”，并促使哲学家们思考，除了信念、真理和论证之外，知识是否还有第四个标准。盖蒂尔不仅对柏拉图的定义表示怀疑，而且对是否有可能完全定义知识是什么表示怀疑。

Most philosophers accepted Plato’s definition of knowledge as justified true belief until the 1960s, when Edmund Gettier showed that it didn’t always provide a satisfactory explanation. He came up with several instances where we instinctively realize that someone doesn’t really know something, even though that person’s belief is both true and justified. For example, I have arranged to meet my friend Sue at her house, and when I arrive I see her through the window sitting in the kitchen. In fact, it is not Sue that I see, but her identical twin sister—Sue is actually in another room. My belief that Sue is home is true, and I have good reason to believe it because I am sure I have seen her, but it is wrong to say that I knew she was at home—I didn’t know. Examples such as this became known as “Gettier problems,” and have prompted philosophers to ask if, in addition to belief, truth, and justification, there is a fourth criterion for knowledge. Gettier had cast doubt not only on Plato’s definition, but also on whether or not it is possible to define completely what knowledge is.

信仰还是理性？

FAITH OR REASON?

中世纪基督教哲学家在尝试使用希腊哲学论证来证明其信仰时，有时会发现矛盾。然而，在东方哲学中，人们只是将宗教信仰（如生死轮回）视为信仰问题，而不是哲学辩论。

Medieval Christian philosophers sometimes found a conflict when they attempted to use Greek philosophical arguments to justify their beliefs. In Eastern philosophy, however, religious beliefs, such as the cycle of birth and rebirth, were simply accepted as a matter of faith rather than philosophical debate.

我们不断地探索宇宙，但似乎总有更多的东西有待发现。也许我们所知无止境。一些哲学家问我们是否有能力知道一切，或者有些事情我们永远无法知道。

We are continually finding out more about the universe, but it seems that there is always more to discover. It may be that there really are no limits to what there is to know. Some philosophers have asked if we are capable of knowing everything there is to know, or if there are some things we can never know.

经验的局限性

The limits of experience

随着中世纪以后科学发现的重大进步，我们似乎可以继续探索宇宙，直到我们知道所有需要知道的东西——我们知识的唯一限制就是现实存在的限制。但在《人类理解论》中，约翰·洛克挑战了这一假设，并表明我们无法知道某些事情。作为一名经验主义者，他认为，出生时我们的思想是一张“白板”：我们一无所知，所有的知识都是通过五种感官从经验中获取的。而且，由于我们获取外部世界信息的唯一方式是通过感官，因此现实的某些部分可能永远对我们隐藏。例如，盲人可以闻到花香，感受到阳光的温暖，听到雨声，但看不到月亮或星星，因此无法直接获得有关它们存在的第一手知识。我们对现实的了解仅限于我们能够直接感知的事物，或我们能够根据我们能够直接感知的事物推断的事物（例如未观察到的星系或电子）。但现实可能远比我们通过这种方式能够了解的要多得多。

With the major advances in scientific discovery after medieval times, it seemed that we could go on finding out about the universe until we knew everything there is to know—that the only limits to our knowledge were the limits of what exists in reality. But in his Essay Concerning Human Understanding, John Locke challenged this assumption, and showed that we are not capable of knowing some things. As an empiricist, he believed that at birth our minds are a “blank slate”: we know nothing, and acquire all our knowledge from experience through our five senses. And because our only way of getting information about the world outside us is through our senses, there may be parts of reality that are forever hidden from us. For example, a blind person can smell flowers, feel the warmth of the sun, and hear the rain, but can’t see the moon or stars, and so can’t have any direct firsthand knowledge of their existence. Our knowledge of reality is limited to what we can directly perceive, or to what we can infer based on what we can directly perceive (such as unobserved galaxies or electrons). But there may be much more to reality than we are capable of knowing in this way.

师资有限

Limited faculties

另一位探索人类认知极限的哲学家是 18 世纪的伊曼纽尔·康德。和洛克一样，康德也认识到人类的能力（感官和推理能力）并不全面，限制了人类的认知。但康德还指出，我们用感官体验到的东西不一定与实际存在的事物相同。我们的思维为我们提供了事物的表象，类似于摄像机为我们提供了场景的视听表象——它类似于现实，但又不是现实，无法捕捉现实中的一切。当然，我们的体验可能会添加一些实际上并不存在的东西（如幻觉）。

Another philosopher who explored the idea that there are limits to what we can know was Immanuel Kant, in the 18th century. Like Locke, he recognized that our faculties—our senses and our ability to reason—are not comprehensive and limit what we can know. But Kant also showed that what we experience with our senses is not necessarily the same as what actually exists. Our minds give us a representation of a thing, similar to the way a video camera gives us an audio-visual representation of a scene—it is like reality, but it is not reality, and does not capture everything there is in that reality. And, of course, our experience may add things that are not really there (as in illusions).

两种不同的现实

Two different realities

康德解释说，事物呈现在我们眼前的样子与它们实际的样子（他称之为“自在之物”）之间存在差异。这两件事物似乎存在于两个不同的世界中。一个是我们用有限的能力体验到的世界，他称之为现象世界，但还有一个“自在之物”的世界，即本体世界，我们无法体验。我们所能理解、知道和领悟的一切，都受到我们能力的限制，但这并不意味着其他事物不存在——只是我们没有办法感知它们。我们的知识仅限于现象世界，即我们可以体验的时空世界，而事物真实的本体世界对我们来说永远是不可知的。我们能够体验的永远不是现实本身。有些事情我们永远无法知道，我们甚至不知道我们不知道的事情是什么，因为这些事情确实超出了我们的理解范围。

Kant explained that there is a difference between things as they appear to us and what they actually are—what he called the “thing-in-itself.” It is as if these two things exist in two different worlds. There is the world as we experience it with our limited faculties, which he called the phenomenal world, but there is also a world of “things-in-themselves,” the noumenal world, which we are not capable of experiencing. The total of what we can apprehend, know, and understand, is limited by our faculties, but that doesn’t mean that other things don’t exist—just that we have no way of perceiving them. Our knowledge is limited to the phenomenal world, the world of space and time that we can experience, and the noumenal world of things as they really are will always be unknowable to us. What we are able to experience is never reality as it is in itself. There are things that we can never know, and we can’t even have an idea of what it is that we don’t know, since these things are literally beyond our understanding.

巨大的未知数

伊曼纽尔·康德认为，无论我们如何努力观察，总会有一些事情超出我们的理解范围——根本无法了解的事情。

Immanuel Kant argued that, no matter how hard we look, there will always be some things that are beyond our comprehension—things that are simply unknowable.

未知的未知数

UNKNOWN UNKNOWNS

前国防部长唐纳德·拉姆斯菲尔德在谈到我们知识的局限性时说：“有些事情是已知的，有些事情我们知道我们知道。有些事情是已知的未知，也就是说，有些事情我们现在知道我们不知道。但也有未知的未知，有些事情我们不知道我们不知道。”

Former secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld referred to the limits of our knowledge when he said, “There are known knowns; there are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns; that is to say, there are things that we now know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns—there are things we do not know we don’t know.”

参见：我们从经验中学习

See also: We learn from EXPERIENCE

哲学探究可以看作是对真理的探索——但哲学家们也一直在争论我们对真理的看法与实际情况的对应程度。有些人认为我们可能永远无法确切知道，但有些事情我们可以接受为真理。

Philosophical inquiry can be seen as a search for truth—but philosophers have also debated how much our ideas of what is true correspond to what actually is the case. Some thought that we may never know for sure, but that there are certain things we can accept as true.

有效解释

Valid explanations

我们对知识的渴求是哲学探究的驱动力，只有找到我们认为是真实的东西，这种渴求才会得到满足。哲学家们一直在争论我们是否能够知道某件事是否真的是真实的。但在 19 世纪末，美国哲学家查尔斯·桑德斯·皮尔斯质疑了这种真理的重要性。他认为，许多哲学辩论都无法就什么是真实、什么不是真实得出令人满意的结论，事实上，这无关紧要——大多数时候，我们需要的只是一个令人满意的解释。如果我们相信某件事，而且它对我们有用，那么它是否准确地描述了现实并不重要。重要的是相信它是真实的后果。他认为，知识是由这些有效解释的集合组成的，而不是我们肯定知道是事实的东西。皮尔斯关于真理的思想构成了实用主义哲学流派的基础。实用主义者认为，哲学的目的不是试图提供宇宙的真实图景，而是帮助我们实际地生活在其中。

Our thirst for knowledge is what drives philosophical inquiry, and it isn’t satisfied until we have found something we believe is true. Philosophers have argued about whether we can ever know if something is really true or not. But in the late 19th century, American philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce questioned the importance of this kind of truth. He thought that a lot of philosophical debate could never come to a satisfactory conclusion about what is and isn’t true, and that this is, in fact, irrelevant—most of the time, what we need is simply a satisfactory explanation. If we believe something, and it works for us, it doesn’t matter if it is an accurate picture of reality. What matters is the consequences of believing it is true. Knowledge, he suggested, consists of a collection of these valid explanations, rather than things that we know for certain to be facts. Peirce’s ideas about truth formed the basis for a school of philosophy known as pragmatism. Pragmatists believe that the purpose of philosophy is not to try to provide a true picture of the universe, but to help us live in it practically.

真实——或者有用吗？

True—or useful?

皮尔斯认为，我们所认为的真理是一系列有效解释的集合，这与传统观点截然不同，传统观点认为真理由不变的事实组成。对皮尔斯来说，如果找到更好的解释，我们所接受的解释可以被取代。另一位美国哲学家威廉·詹姆斯也继承了这一观点。他认为，只要对我们有用，某件事就是真的。一旦失去用处，它就不再是真的了。例如，长期以来，人们相信地球是宇宙的中心，但随着天文学家对行星轨道的观察，这种宇宙观变得无法令人满意。一种新的解释，即太阳是宇宙的中心，成为了公认的“真理”。宇宙没有改变；只有我们知道的真理改变了。这些真理不同于事实，我们不需要知道我们使用的真理是否与事实相符。我们只需要知道它是否对我们有用。詹姆斯说，我们的信念是否实用，以及我们如何运用它们，决定了它们的真实性。

Peirce’s view that what we consider to be true is a collection of valid explanations was very different from the traditional idea that truth consists of facts that never change. For Peirce, the explanations we accept as true can be replaced if a better explanation is found. This notion was taken up by another American philosopher, William James. He believed that something is true as long as it is useful to us. As soon as it loses its usefulness, it is no longer true. For example, for a long time people believed that Earth was at the center of the universe, but as astronomers observed the orbits of the planets, this view of the universe became unsatisfactory. A new explanation, with the sun as the center of the universe, became the accepted “truth.” The universe hadn’t changed; only the truths we know about it. These truths are different from facts, and we don’t need to know if the truth we use corresponds to the facts. We only need to know if it works for us. It is the usefulness of our beliefs, and how we use them, James said, that makes them true.

相信真理

宇宙不会改变，但我们相信的关于宇宙的真理却一直在改变。实用主义者认为，如果一种信念有用，能帮助我们在宇宙中生存，那么它是否真实并不重要。

The universe doesn’t change, but what we believe to be true about it changes all the time. Pragmatists think that if a belief is useful and helps us live in the universe, it doesn’t matter if it is true or not.

实用哲学

Practical philosophy

真理和有用性相互关联这一思想是实用主义的核心。皮尔士强调，我们获得知识并非仅仅通过观察和思考，而是通过实践——积极检验知识的有用性，并考虑接受某事物为真理的含义。后来的哲学家，尤其是约翰·杜威，将实用主义的这一方面应用于日常生活的实际问题，尤其是政治和教育。杜威提倡动手学习，而不是死记硬背或重复学习，因为这鼓励我们发现事物的有用解释，而不是简单地接受二手知识。实用主义成为 20 世纪哲学的重要运动，尤其是在美国。在那里，哲学家们从欧洲哲学的抽象问题转向更实用的方法，采用了杜威对成功哲学理论的检验：“它是帮助我们理解我们的经验，还是让它变得更加令人困惑？”

The idea that truth and usefulness are interrelated is central to pragmatism. Peirce emphasized that we gain knowledge not from simply observing and thinking, but by doing things—actively testing the usefulness of our knowledge and considering the implications of accepting something as true. Later philosophers, notably John Dewey, applied this aspect of pragmatism to the practical problems of everyday life, and especially to politics and education. Dewey advocated hands-on learning, rather than learning by rote, or repetition, since this encourages us to discover useful explanations of things and not simply accept secondhand knowledge. Pragmatism became an important movement in 20th-century philosophy, particularly in the United States. There, philosophers moved away from the abstract problems of European philosophy toward a more practical approach, adopting Dewey’s test of a successful philosophical theory: “Does it help us understand our experience, or make it more puzzling?”

森林小道

THE FOREST PATH

为了解释实用主义，威廉·詹姆斯讲了一个迷失在森林中的人的故事。他又累又饿，偶然发现了一条小路。这个人可以选择相信这条小路会带他走出森林，找到食物和住处，然后沿着它走下去。或者，他可以相信这条小路不会带他走出森林，留在原地挨饿。无论他做出哪种选择，都会被证明是正确的。

To explain pragmatism, William James told the story of a man lost in a forest. Tired and hungry, he comes across a path. The man can choose to believe that the path will lead him out of the forest to food and shelter, and follow it. Alternatively, he can believe that it doesn’t, and stay where he is and starve. Whichever choice he makes, it will be proved to be true.

参见：你永远不可能知道一切|什么是真实的？

See also: You can NEVER know it ALL | What is REAL?

当最早的哲学家们审视周围的世界时，他们意识到存在的事物必定是由某种东西构成的。他们提出的第一个问题——“世界是由什么构成的？”——是哲学的一个重要分支——形而上学的开端，形而上学关注的是存在的东西及其存在的本质。

As the earliest philosophers examined the world around them, they realized that things that exist must be made of something. Their first question—“What is the world made of?”—was the beginning of a major branch of philosophy, metaphysics, which is concerned with what exists, and the nature of its existence.

一个、四个、还是多个？

早期哲学家认为宇宙完全由水、四种元素或微小原子组成。其中一些早期观点至今仍在争论中。

Early philosophers reasoned that the universe was made entirely of water, or from all four elements, or tiny atoms. Some of these early ideas are still being debated today.

宇宙的物质

The substance of the universe

米利都，一个位于现在的土耳其的希腊沿海定居点，是我们所知的最早的哲学家的故乡。其中第一位哲学家是泰勒斯，他也是一名天文学家和工程师，他对宇宙是由什么构成的这个问题非常着迷。鉴于世界上存在着各种各样的事物，他提出了一个令人惊讶的理论：他认为一切都是由一种物质组成的。他认为，这种物质就是水。他推断，水是所有生命所必需的，陆地似乎是从海洋中冒出来的，水以液体、气体和固体形式存在；因此，一切事物在其存在的某个时刻都必须由水组成。泰勒斯将他的新哲学思想传授给其他思想家，包括阿那克西曼德，他指出，如果地球是由水支撑的，那么一定有某种东西支撑着水。继阿那克西曼德之后，更多的哲学家提出了其他解释，例如阿那克西美尼的理论，即地球漂浮在空气中，因此空气一定是宇宙的唯一物质。

Miletus, a Greek coastal settlement in what is now Turkey, was the home of the earliest philosophers we know about. The first of these, Thales, was also an astronomer and engineer, who became fascinated by the question of what the universe is made of. He came up with a surprising theory, given the enormous variety of different things in the world: He believed that everything is composed of a single substance. This substance, he suggested, is water. He reasoned that water is necessary for all life, that land appears to emerge from the sea, and that water exists in liquid, gas, and solid forms; therefore, everything must consist of water at some point in its existence. Thales taught his new philosophical ideas to other thinkers, including Anaximander, who pointed out that if Earth is supported by water, there must be something that supports the water. Following Anaximander came yet more philosophers, offering alternative explanations, such as Anaximenes’s theory that Earth floats on air, and that air must therefore be the single substance of the universe.

有与无

Something and nothing

一元论认为宇宙本质上由一种物质组成，这种观点主导了早期哲学，随之而来的是宇宙的基本性质是某种不会改变的东西的观点。巴门尼德用推理证明了情况必定如此。他认为，某物不可能既存在又不存在，所以我们不能说虚无状态存在——没有“虚无”这种东西。因此，存在的东西不可能来自虚无——它必须一直存在，并且它将永远存在，因为它也不能变成虚无。那么，宇宙一定充满了某种东西，因为没有“虚无”。这个“东西”是一种不变的、永恒的单一物质。

Monism, the view that the universe essentially consists of a single substance, dominated early philosophy, and along with it came the idea that the fundamental nature of the universe is something that does not change. Parmenides used reasoning to show that this must be the case. He argued that it is impossible for something both to exist and not exist, so we can’t say that a state of nothing exists—there is no such thing as “nothing.” Therefore, a thing that exists cannot have come from nothing—it must have always existed, and it will always exist since it can’t become nothing either. The universe, then, must be full of something, since there is no “nothing.” This “something” is a single substance that is unchanging and eternal.

元素和原子

Elements and atoms

巴门尼德为宇宙的根本不变性提供了一个有趣的论据，但也有其他人不同意。其中一位是恩培多克勒，他认为巴门尼德的理论无法解释我们在世界上可以看到的各种不同事物，也无法解释为什么世界似乎在不断变化。相反，他认为基本物质不是一种，而是有四种，他称之为元素：火、水、土和空气。虽然这些物质本身是不变的，但它们以不同的比例组合在一起，形成了世界上的各种事物，而且这些组合不断变化。德谟克利特和留基伯（被称为原子论者）提出的另一种理论是，一切都是由微小、不变、不可毁灭的粒子组成的，这些粒子被称为原子。它们可以在完全空旷的空间中自由移动，并相互结合形成我们在世界上发现的各种物质。当这些物质死亡或衰变时，原子会重新结合形成新的东西。

Parmenides provided an interesting argument for the fundamentally unchanging nature of the universe, but there were others who disagreed. One, Empedocles, felt that Parmenides’s theory could not explain the variety of different things we can see in the world, or why the world appears to be constantly changing. Instead, he suggested that rather than one fundamental substance, there are four, which he called elements: fire, water, earth, and air. While these are themselves unchanging, they combine in different proportions to make the various things in the world, and the combinations change continually. Another theory, proposed by Democritus and Leucippus (known as the atomists), was that everything is composed of minuscule, unchanging, and indestructible particles called atoms. These are free to move around in completely empty space and combine with one another to form the various substances we find in the world. When these substances die or decay, the atoms recombine to form something new.

持久的理念

LASTING IDEAS

早期希腊哲学具有深远的影响。恩培多克勒的四种基本元素概念演变为现代化学，其中使用了元素一词。现代物理学与原子论者的粒子理论有着相同的思想和用语。甚至万物最终由一种物质构成的主张也在现代物理学中重新浮现，即所有物质都是能量。

Early Greek philosophy had a lasting influence. Empedocles’s notion of four basic elements evolved into modern chemistry, which uses the term element. Modern physics shares the ideas and words of the atomists’ theory of particles. Even the suggestion that everything is ultimately made of one substance has resurfaced in modern physics, with the idea that all matter is energy.

参见：宇宙有结构吗？ |有不朽的灵魂这种东西吗？

See also: Is there a STRUCTURE to the universe? | Is there such a thing as an IMMORTAL soul?

我们生活在一个复杂且不断变化的宇宙中，早期的哲学家们试图通过询问万物是由什么构成的来理解宇宙。他们还想知道宇宙是否真的像看上去那么混乱。宇宙和其中的万物是否都有潜在的结构？如果有，是什么导致了它的存在——它有目的吗？

We live in a complex and constantly changing universe, which early philosophers tried to make sense of by asking what everything is made of. They also wondered if the universe is as chaotic as it seems. Could the universe and everything in it have an underlying structure? if so, what caused it—and does it have a purpose?

数学规则！

Mathematics rules!

从哲学诞生之初，人们就认为在复杂的世界之下存在着一种可识别的结构。泰勒斯和他的学生提出了他们所知道的各种世界模型，要么是漂浮在无边无际的海洋上的陆地，要么是悬浮在空中的鼓形或扁平圆盘。后来的解释扩展到整个宇宙。人们已经辨别出太阳、月亮、行星和恒星运动的模式，但哲学家毕达哥拉斯对它们的解释不同。他对数学着迷，发现几何形状符合特定的数学规则，并推断天体形成的形状也是如此。他还发现听起来和谐的音符对应着数学比率的模式（见天体和谐）。毕达哥拉斯得出结论，宇宙中的一切，包括天体的位置和运动，都受数学规则支配，宇宙的结构可以用数学术语来描述。

From the beginnings of philosophy, it has been suggested that there is an identifiable structure beneath the complexity of the world. Thales and his pupils proposed various models of the world as they knew it, either as a land floating on an infinite sea, or as a drum-shaped or flat disk suspended in air. Later explanations extended to the entire cosmos. People had discerned patterns in the movements of the sun, moon, planets, and stars, but the philosopher Pythagoras interpreted them differently. Fascinated by mathematics, he discovered that geometric shapes conform to particular mathematical rules, and reasoned that the shapes formed by the heavenly bodies would, too. He also found that musical notes that sound harmonious together correspond to a pattern of mathematical ratios (see Heavenly harmony). Pythagoras concluded that everything in the universe, including the positions and movement of the heavenly bodies, is governed by the rules of mathematics, and that the structure of the universe can be described in mathematical terms.

原子思想

Atomic ideas

毕达哥拉斯通过数学和天文学寻找结构，而其他哲学家则从较小的尺度研究事物。恩培多克勒试图从不同物质由火、水、土和空气的各种组合形成的方式来解释万物的结构。原子论者德谟克利特和留基伯描述了一个由无数不同类型和形状的粒子组成的宇宙。宇宙中的每一种物质，包括生物和无生命物体，都是由这些原子组成的，万物的结构由它们以某种方式自然结合的倾向决定。原子论者认为，由于原子是永恒不变的，因此它们和它们所创造的结构不是由任何事物引起的，也没有目的。这在当时是不寻常的。

While Pythagoras looked for structure through mathematics and astronomy, other philosophers examined things on a smaller scale. Empedocles sought an explanation of the structure of everything from the way that different substances are formed from various combinations of fire, water, earth, and air. And the atomists Democritus and Leucippus described a universe made up of an infinite number of particles of various types and shapes. Every substance in the universe, including living beings as well as inanimate objects, is composed of these atoms, and the structure of everything is determined by their natural tendency to combine in certain ways. The atomists believed, unusually for the time, that because atoms are unchanging and eternal, they and the structures they create were not caused by anything and have no purpose.

四个原因

Four causes

对于许多哲学家来说，仅仅说宇宙有结构是不够的——还需要解释它是如何产生的以及出于什么目的。亚里士多德关心的是找出他所说的事物的“原因”，但他对“原因”一词的使用与我们日常的含义稍有不同。他所说的某物的“物质因”是该事物的构成物质，而“形式因”是事物的组合方式、形式或结构，亚里士多德认为这遵循一定的自然原则和规律。“有效因”最接近我们日常含义的“原因”：它导致变化、使某事物产生或从一件事变成另一件事。根据亚里士多德的说法，事物的“最终因”是它产生的原因以及它的目的——它的目的。他认为，任何事情的发生，这四个原因必须同时存在。

For many philosophers, it was not enough to say that the universe has a structure—it was necessary to explain how it came to be and for what purpose. Aristotle was concerned about identifying what he called the “causes” of things, but his use of the word cause is slightly different from our everyday meaning. What he called the “material cause” of something is the substance it is made from, while the “formal cause” is the way it is put together, its form or structure, which Aristotle believed followed certain natural principles and laws. The “efficient cause” is closest to our everyday meaning of cause: it is what brings about change, makes something come about, or change from one thing to another. The “final cause” of a thing, according to Aristotle, is the reason why it has come about and what it is for—its purpose. For anything to come about, he argued, these four causes must exist at the same time.

天伦之和

HEAVENLY HARMONY

毕达哥拉斯用不同长度的振动弦进行实验，发现了音阶中音符之间的数学关系。他推断，天体与地球的距离与彼此和谐振动的弦的长度相对应，从而在空间中创造了他所谓的“天体和谐”。

Pythagoras experimented with vibrating strings of different lengths and discovered a mathematical relationship between notes in a musical scale. He reasoned that the distances of heavenly bodies from Earth correspond to lengths of string that vibrate in harmony with one another, creating what he called a “harmony of the spheres” in space.

参见：宇宙是由什么构成的？

See also: What is the UNIVERSE made of?

当我们谈论存在的东西时，我们首先想到的是具有物质实质的物理对象。但也有一些看似非物质的东西，比如想法、思想和记忆。我们看不见也摸不着它们，但这并不意味着它们不是真实的。那么，什么才是真实的呢？

When we talk about what exists, we first tend to think of physical objects that have material substance. But there are also seemingly nonmaterial things such as ideas, thoughts, and memories. We cannot see or touch them, but that doesn’t mean they are not real. So what actually is real?

物质世界

A material world

对于什么是真实的这个问题，显而易见的答案是那些由我们可以看到和触摸到的物理物质构成的东西。一些哲学家认为，现实只包括我们用感官感知到的事物，即物质世界。唯物主义者，正如他们所知，认为不存在非物质世界——现实中不存在任何非物质的东西。最早持这种观点的人是德谟克利特和留基伯，他们认为现实中除了原子和空虚的空间什么都没有，还有伊壁鸠鲁，他们进一步发展了他们的论点，证明了任何非物质的东西都不存在，包括灵魂。但直到很久以后，唯物主义才成为主流哲学的一部分，那时科学而不是宗教成为了解世界的主要来源。这种日益唯物主义的观点在 19 世纪被德国哲学家路德维希·费尔巴哈和卡尔·马克思所接受，他们更公开地拒绝了传统宗教对非物质世界的描述。

The obvious answer to the question of what is real is the things that are made of some physical substance that we can see and touch. Some philosophers argue that reality consists only of things perceived with our senses, the material world. Materialists, as they are known, believe there is no such thing as a nonmaterial world—nothing exists in reality that is not material. Among the first to hold this view were Democritus and Leucippus, who argued that there is nothing in reality but atoms and empty space, and Epicurus, who developed their argument further to demonstrate the nonexistence of anything nonmaterial, including a soul. But it was not until much later that materialism became part of mainstream philosophy, when science rather than religion became the main source of knowledge of the world. This increasingly materialist outlook was taken up in the 19th century by German philosophers Ludwig Feuerbach and Karl Marx, who were more openly dismissive of traditional religious descriptions of nonmaterial worlds.

理想世界

An ideal world

唯物主义的另一个极端是相信现实本质上是非物质的——现实中不存在任何物质。这种唯心主义观点最令人信服地是由乔治·贝克莱提出的。他认为，我们所感知到的不是物理世界中的物质，而是我们头脑中的想法。因此，现实只由想法和感知想法的头脑组成，并不存在物质实体这种东西。想法要存在，就必须被感知。但如果某物只在被感知时才存在，那么当没有人感知它时，它是否就不复存在了？例如，如果公园里长着一棵树，而那里没有人感知它，它还在那里吗？贝克莱是一位基督教主教，他的回答是肯定的，那棵树还在那里：事物之所以继续存在，是因为它们总是被上帝的头脑所感知。

At the other extreme from materialism is the belief that reality is essentially nonmaterial—that nothing material exists in reality. This view, idealism, was most convincingly proposed by George Berkeley. He argued that what we perceive are not material things in a physical world, but ideas in our minds. So reality consists only of ideas and the minds that perceive them, and there is no such thing as material substance. For an idea to exist, it has to be perceived. But if something exists only when it is perceived, does it cease to exist when there is no mind to perceive it? If a tree is growing in a park, for example, and there is nobody there to perceive it, is it still there? Berkeley, a Christian bishop, said yes, the tree is still there: Things continue to exist because they are always perceived by the mind of God.

完全现实

Total reality

然而，大多数哲学家都接受物质世界的存在，但也承认非物质事物的存在。柏拉图认为，我们所生活的日常世界只是真实理念世界的“复制品”，这一观点被基督教和伊斯兰哲学家所采纳，所有主要宗教都将尘世世界与另一个理想世界进行对比。勒内·笛卡尔也将整个现实描述为由两个独立的世界组成，一个是物质世界，一个是理想世界，即使是持怀疑态度的休谟也没有否认非物质事物的存在。也许对现实最具影响力的描述是由伊曼纽尔·康德提供的，他提出，我们可以用我们的感官和思想体验一个物质和非物质的世界，但这只是整个现实的一部分——还有一些我们无法了解的东西，但它们确实存在于现实中。

Most philosophers, however, accept the existence of the material world, but also acknowledge the reality of nonmaterial things. Plato’s notion that the everyday world we live in is just a “copy” of the real world of ideas was adopted by Christian and Islamic philosophers, and all the major religions contrast the earthly realm with another, ideal world. René Descartes, too, described total reality as consisting of two separate worlds, a material and an ideal world, and even the skeptical Hume did not deny the reality of nonmaterial things. Perhaps the most influential description of reality was provided by Immanuel Kant, who proposed that we can experience a world of things both material and nonmaterial with our senses and our minds, but this is only a part of total reality—there are also things we can’t have any knowledge of, but which nevertheless exist in reality.

约翰逊的证明

JOHNSON’S PROOF

大多数人本能地认为乔治·贝克莱的“物质世界不存在”的观点不可能是真的，但他的唯心论很难被反驳。然而，作家塞缪尔·约翰逊用力踢了一块大石头，靴子弹了回来，对贝克莱做出了一个常识性的回答，他说：“我这样反驳它。”

Most people instinctively feel that George Berkeley’s notion that a material world does not exist cannot be true, but his argument for idealism is difficult to counter. The writer Samuel Johnson, however, offered a common-sense reply to Berkeley by forcefully kicking a large stone so that his boot bounced back from it, and saying, “I refute it thus.”

参见：不要相信你的感觉|知识来自推理

See also: Don’t trust your SENSES | Knowledge comes from REASONING

从第一批希腊哲学家开始，我们就清楚地认识到，我们对世界的认识充其量是不完整的，而且我们经常犯错。我们通过经验和推理对世界上的事物形成印象，但哲学家们对我们能够实现的现实表述的准确性存在争议。

From the time of the first Greek philosophers, it has been clear that our knowledge of the world is at best incomplete, and we are often mistaken. We form an impression of what’s in the world through our experience and reasoning, but philosophers dispute how accurate a representation of reality we can achieve.

错误印象

False impressions

许多哲学家认为，我们通过感官体验到的东西——我们看到、听到、闻到、尝到和触摸到的东西——会让我们错误地了解现实中存在的东西。柏拉图解释说，这是因为我们生活的世界实际上只是一个我们无法用感官体验的完美现实的虚幻版本，是一个我们用头脑体验到的非物质世界。存在两个世界，以不同的方式体验，这一观点也是勒内·笛卡尔理性主义哲学的核心。然而，与柏拉图不同，他并不认为物质世界是理想现实的“影子”。不完美的不是世界，而是我们的感官，它们可能会被欺骗，不能相信它们会给我们一个关于周围世界的真实想法。更可靠的是我们的推理能力，我们可以用它体验理想世界，更好地理解事物的实际情况。

Many philosophers have argued that what we experience through our senses—what we see, hear, smell, taste, and touch—gives us a false idea of what exists in reality. Plato explained that this is because the world we live in is actually only an illusory version of a perfect reality that we can’t experience with our senses, an immaterial world of ideas we experience with our minds. The idea that there are two worlds, experienced in different ways, was also central to René Descartes’s rationalist philosophy. Unlike Plato, however, he did not think of the material world as a “shadow” of an ideal reality. It is not the world that is imperfect, but our senses, which can be deceived and cannot be trusted to give us a true idea of the world around us. More reliable is our ability to reason, with which we can experience the ideal world and get a better understanding of things as they actually are.

物体的品质

The qualities of an object

然而，其他人则拒绝接受理想的非物质世界的概念。对于经验主义哲学家来说，现实只包括我们生活的物质世界——我们通过感官体验的世界。我们用理性来解释感官告诉我们的东西，正是这一点提供了我们对世界的观念。约翰·洛克就是这样一位经验主义者，他认为我们以两种方式体验物质世界。他说，我们体验的对象具有不同的品质。他所说的物体的“主要品质”是可以客观测量的属性，例如其大小、重量、位置和运动——这些属性与观察它们的人无关。物体还具有“次要品质”，这些品质可能因观察者而异，并且是主观的——例如，味道、气味和颜色的属性。我们可以准确地体验物体的主要品质，但我们对其次要品质的想法与物体本身不同。

Others, however, rejected the notion of an ideal, immaterial world. For empiricist philosophers, reality consists only of the material world we live in—the world that we experience through our senses. We use our reason to interpret what our senses tell us, and it is this that provides the ideas we have about the world. One such empiricist was John Locke, who suggested that we experience the material world in two ways. The objects of our experience, he said, have different qualities. An object’s “primary qualities,” as he called them, are the properties that can be measured objectively, such as its size, weight, position, and movement—properties that are independent of the person observing them. Objects also have “secondary qualities,” which can differ from one observer to another and are subjective—for example, the properties of taste, smell, and color. We can have an accurate experience of the primary qualities of an object, but our ideas of its secondary qualities are different from the object as it is in itself.

两个世界，一个心灵

亚瑟·叔本华认为，现实由我们的意志所属的自然力量和我们通过感官体验到的物质对象组成。

Arthur Schopenhauer believed that reality consists of a natural force that our will is a part of, and material objects that we experience through our senses.

有志者事竟成……

Where there’s a Will…

伊曼纽尔·康德提出了一种结合理性主义和经验主义思想的解释，拒绝了我们可以通过感官或思维体验到的独立世界的概念。他认为，我们自然地知道存在于空间和时间中的物体的属性，我们利用这些知识来解释感官告诉我们的东西。他说，另一个世界是物自体的世界，但这个世界超出了我们的体验能力。亚瑟·叔本华同意现实由我们能体验和不能体验的世界组成。他意识到，我们将自己的身体体验为世界上的物体，但我们也意识到我们的意图，这些意图导致这些身体移动和做事——我们的意志，这是物自体的一个例子。他得出结论，现实由物质世界（他称之为表象世界）和潜在的自然力量（意志世界）组成。我们无法直接体验意志世界，但我们意识到自己的意志，这是存在于万物中的普遍意志的一部分。

Immanuel Kant proposed an explanation that combined rationalist and empiricist ideas, rejecting the notion of separate worlds we can experience either through our senses or our minds. He believed that we naturally know the properties of objects that exist in space and time, and we use this knowledge to interpret what our senses tell us. Another world exists, he said, of things-in-themselves, but this world is beyond our capability to experience. Arthur Schopenhauer agreed that reality consists of worlds we can and can’t experience. He realized that we experience our own bodies as objects in the world, but we are also aware of our intentions, which cause those bodies to move and do things—our will, which is an example of a thing-in-itself. He concluded that reality consists of the material world, which he called the world of Representation, and an underlying force of nature, the world of Will. We can’t experience the world of Will directly, but we are conscious of our own will, which is a part of the universal Will present in everything.

东方遇见西方

EAST MEETS WEST

亚瑟·叔本华认为我们的意志是普遍意志的一部分，这与印度哲学中的现实概念相似。印度教和佛教的根本观点是，我们所经历的世界是虚幻的，掩盖了我们对永恒的、普遍的现实的感知，而万物都是这个现实的一部分。只有通过启蒙，我们才能打破生死轮回，感知这个普遍的存在领域——万物合一的现实。

Arthur Schopenhauer’s idea that our will is part of a universal Will is similar to the concept of reality in Indian philosophy. Underlying Hinduism and Buddhism is the view that the world we experience is illusory and masks our perception of the eternal, universal reality that everything is part of. Only through enlightenment can we break the cycle of birth and rebirth and perceive this universal realm of being—the reality where all is One.

参见：你从哪里得到这个想法？|知识来自推理|我们从经验中学习

See also: Where did you get that IDEA? | Knowledge comes from REASONING | We learn from EXPERIENCE

在试图确定什么存在或不存在时，一些哲学家以思想实验作为起点，这些实验否认我们除了自己存在之外可以确定任何事物。从这一确定性出发，他们为我们关于其他事物存在的认知建立了论据。

In trying to establish what does or does not exist, several philosophers took as their starting point thought experiments that denied we can be sure of anything except our own existence. From this single certainty, they built arguments for our knowledge of the existence of other things.

飞人

The flying man

伊斯兰哲学家伊本·西纳（又名阿维森纳）在 11 世纪为他的“飞人”思想实验设计了一个有趣的形象。他想象一个人漂浮在空中，蒙着眼睛，什么也不碰，因此他无法从感官获得任何信息，也完全不知道自己的身体或外部世界。但他仍然知道自己存在。阿维森纳试图表明，存在的东西是人的灵魂，与身体不同。然而，与此同时，他也提出了一个问题，即除了我们自己之外，我们能确定还有什么存在。大约 600 年后，勒内·笛卡尔提出了一个类似的思想实验——一个邪恶的魔鬼欺骗了他所有的感官——以消除所有可能被怀疑的东西，并从他存在这一唯一确定性出发建立他对世界的认识。但阿维森纳和笛卡尔仅仅表明“灵魂”或“心灵”存在并且意识到自身的存在，而不是表明他们拥有存在于物质世界中的身体。

The Islamic philosopher Ibn Sînâ, also known as Avicenna, devised an intriguing image for his “flying man” thought experiment in the 11th century. He imagined a man floating in the air, blindfolded, and touching nothing, so that he receives no information from his senses and is completely unaware of his body or the world outside him. Yet he is still aware that he exists. Avicenna had set out to show that this thing that exists is the man’s soul, distinct from his body. However, at the same time, he raised questions about what we can be sure exists other than ourselves. Around 600 years later, René Descartes presented a similar thought experiment—the idea of an evil demon deceiving all his senses—in order to dismiss anything that could be doubted, and build his knowledge of the world from the single certainty that he existed. But Avicenna and Descartes showed only that the “soul” or “mind” exists and is aware of its own existence, and not that they had bodies that exist in a material world.

缸中之脑

A brain in a vat

20 世纪 80 年代，美国哲学家希拉里·普特南 (Hilary Putnam) 对这些思想实验进行了改进，提出了类似的问题，即我们到底能知道多少真正存在的事物。他说，假设我并不像我想象的那样存在；相反，我参加了一个科学家的实验，他摘除了我的大脑，将其放入一个大桶中以保持其活力。我的大脑与一台计算机相连，计算机会刺激我的大脑，让我以为自己正在经历世界上的一切，但实际上这只是一系列电信号。每一次体验都和我在现实世界中用真实的身体体验到的一样——而且我无法知道事实并非如此。在普特南的思想实验中，存在一个外部世界（科学家、计算机和大桶中的大脑），但我对它一无所知——只知道我的大脑所处的世界的幻觉。

In the 1980s, American philosopher Hilary Putnam took these thought experiments and presented an updated version, which raises similar questions about how much we can know about what really exists. Let us suppose, he said, that I don’t exist in the way I think I do; instead, I am part of an experiment by a scientist who has removed my brain and put it in a vat to keep it alive. My brain is wired up to a computer that stimulates it, making me think I’m experiencing everything in the world, but in fact it is just a series of electrical signals. Every experience would be the same as if I experienced it with a real body in a real world—and I would have no way of knowing that this isn’t the case. In Putnam’s thought experiment, an external world exists (the scientist, the computer, and the brain in a vat), but I know nothing about it—only the illusions of a world that my brain is being given.

连接世界

希拉里·普特南描述了一个思想实验，在这个实验中，我们就像一个缸中之脑，与一台计算机相连，让我们认为我们正在体验外面的世界。

Hilary Putnum described a thought experiment in which we exist as a brain in a vat, wired to a computer that makes us think we’re experiencing the world outside.

我们无法确定

We can’t be sure

笛卡尔和普特南只是采取了一种怀疑论的方法来证明我们如何知道我们存在，但许多哲学家发现这些思想实验所描述的情况令人信服。邪恶的恶魔和缸中之脑是强有力的形象，很难找到任何理由不相信它们描述了现实——但那么我们怎么能知道我们所经历的世界存在呢？在我们得到一个明确的答案之前，哲学家们将继续争论这个问题。

Descartes and Putnam merely adopted a skeptical approach as a starting point to establish how we can know we exist, but many philosophers have found the situations these thought experiments describe convincing. The evil demon and the brain in a vat are powerful images, and it is difficult to find any reason not to believe that they describe reality—but then how can we even know that the world we experience exists? Until we have a definitive answer, philosophers will continue to debate this question.

矩阵

THE MATRIX

科幻电影《黑客帝国》三部曲将模拟现实思维实验带入了流行文化。在电影中，一群有感知能力的计算机通过植入物控制人类的思想，诱使他们相信虚拟世界与他们所处的现实世界完全不同。

The Matrix trilogy of science-fiction movies brought the simulated-reality thought experiment into popular culture. In the movies, a breed of sentient computers control the minds of humans through implants, tricking them into believing in a virtual world totally different from the real world of their captivity.

参见：不要相信你的感觉

See also: Don’t trust your SENSES

在试图理解宇宙的物质和结构以及事物存在的意义时，哲学家们一直在思考万物是如何产生的。许多人相信上帝创造了宇宙，并提出了论据来试图证明上帝的存在。

In trying to understand the substance and structure of the universe and what it means for something to exist, philosophers have considered how anything has come to be. Many believed that a god created the universe, and have provided arguments to attempt to prove his existence.

原因和目的

Cause and purpose

许多关于存在一个创造宇宙的至高无上之人的论据可以追溯到柏拉图和亚里士多德的哲学。后来，基督教哲学家们采用了这些论据，试图将他们的信仰与哲学推理相协调。关于存在的主要问题之一是万物存在的原因。认为宇宙是自己产生的似乎是错误的，所以它一定是被创造的——它一定有原因。明显的反对意见是，这个原因本身一定有原因，等等，但使用这种“宇宙论”的哲学家说，存在一个第一个无因之因，我们理解为上帝。另一种论点是“目的论论证”，或设计论证，指出我们可以在宇宙中检测到明确的模式。例如，地球以可预测的轨迹运行，小天鹅会长大成为天鹅。这些模式表明宇宙是经过精心设计的，因此必定是一个有目的的创造者的作品，也就是上帝。

Many of the arguments for the existence of a supreme being that created the universe date back to the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle. These arguments were adopted later by Christian philosophers in their attempts to reconcile their faith with philosophical reasoning. One of the major questions about existence is why anything exists at all. It seems wrong to assume that the universe came into existence on its own, so it must have been created—there must be a cause for it. The obvious objection is that this cause must itself have a cause, and so on, but philosophers using this “cosmological argument” said there is a first, uncaused cause, which we understand to be God. A different argument, the “teleological argument,” or argument from design, points to the fact that we can detect definite patterns in the universe. For instance, Earth moves in a predictable course, and a cygnet will grow up to become a swan. These patterns indicate that the universe has been carefully designed, and therefore must be the work of a creator with some purpose, namely God.

完美存在

A perfect being

中世纪基督教哲学家托马斯·阿奎那提出了五个论据来证明上帝的存在，他称之为Quinque viæ（“五种方式”）。他借鉴了柏拉图和亚里士多德的目的论论证和三个版本的宇宙论论证，但在 11 世纪神学家圣安瑟伦的著作中找到了第五种“方式”。安瑟伦将上帝定义为一个如此伟大的存在，以至于没有比他更伟大的存在。我们可以想象这样一个完美的存在，所以上帝作为我们心中的概念而存在——但一个现实中存在的完美存在显然比只存在于我们心中的存在更伟大。所以，我们现在可以想象一个比我们最初对上帝的观念更伟大的存在，这个上帝存在于我们的心中和现实中。因此，这样的存在，上帝，必须存在：否认他的存在将与安瑟伦对上帝的定义相矛盾。

The medieval Christian philosopher Thomas Aquinas identified five arguments to prove God’s existence, which he called the Quinque viæ (“Five Ways”). He took the teleological argument and three versions of the cosmological argument from Plato and Aristotle, but found the fifth “way” in the work of 11th-century theologian St. Anselm. Anselm defined God as a being so great that nothing greater can be conceived. We can imagine such a perfect being, so God exists as a concept in our minds—but a perfect being that exists in reality would clearly be even greater than one that exists only in our minds. So, we can now imagine a being greater than our initial idea of God, which exists in both our minds and reality. Such a being, God, must therefore exist: To deny his existence would contradict Anselm’s definition of God.

未证实

Not proved

然而，并非所有人都相信这些论据，甚至一些相信上帝存在的人也质疑这些论据的说服力。安瑟伦的“本体论论证”虽然在逻辑上看似合理，但它预设了我们可以想象出最伟大的存在——也许我们做不到。宇宙论论证假设一切事物都必须有原因，而导致所有其他原因的原因只能是上帝，但为什么要假设这一点呢？设计论证同样没有定论，它暗示而不是证明有目的的创造者的存在。到了 19 世纪，越来越多的哲学家对相信上帝持怀疑态度。越来越多的人一致认为，由于不可能确凿地证明或反驳上帝的存在，因此它应该是一个信仰问题，而不是哲学问题。

Not everyone was convinced by these arguments, however, and even some who believed in the existence of God questioned their strength. Anselm’s “ontological argument,” although apparently logically sound, presupposes that we can conceive of the greatest conceivable being—which perhaps we cannot. The cosmological argument assumes that everything must have a cause, and that the cause that causes all other causes can only be God, but why suppose this? The argument from design is equally inconclusive, and suggests, rather than proves, the existence of a purposeful creator. By the 19th century, more and more philosophers were adopting a skeptical attitude toward belief in God. There was a growing consensus of opinion that because it is impossible to conclusively prove or disprove the existence of God, it should remain a matter of faith rather than philosophy.

邪恶的问题

THE PROBLEM OF EVIL

世上存在邪恶这一事实被用来论证不存在全能的仁慈上帝。如果一个仁慈的上帝愿意阻止邪恶，但却无力阻止，他就不是全能的。如果他有能力却不愿意阻止邪恶，他就不是仁慈的。如果他既不愿意也无力阻止邪恶，那么就没有理由把他视为上帝。

The fact that there is evil in the world is used to argue that there is no omnipotent (all-powerful) and benevolent God. If a good God is willing to prevent evil, but is unable to do so, he is not omnipotent. If he is able but not willing, he is not benevolent. If he is neither willing nor able, then there is no reason to regard him as God.

参见：理性 与信仰相容吗？|上帝与此有何关系？

See also: Are REASON and FAITH compatible? | What’s GOD got to do with it?

许多关于宇宙的原始问题似乎已被科学解答，新的科学发现进一步解释了我们周围的世界。然而，似乎总有更多的东西有待发现，而且总有一些问题是科学无法解答的。

Many of the original questions about the universe seem to have been answered by science, and new scientific discoveries further explain the world around us. It seems, however, that there is always more to discover, and there may always be some questions that science cannot answer.

知识测试

只要有可能，科学家就会对理论进行严格的测试。如果一个理论屡次未能通过这样的测试，就需要对其进行修改或用更好的理论取而代之。

Whenever possible, scientists subject theories to rigorous tests. If a theory repeatedly fails such tests, it will need to be altered or replaced by a better one.

科学方法

Scientific method

西方哲学始于对物理宇宙的探究——宇宙由什么构成，结构如何。哲学家们利用他们的推理能力，根据他们观察到的周围事物，提出越来越复杂的理论来解释自然世界。这种观察和推理的过程最初被亚里士多德正式认可为一种探究方法，后来演变成“自然哲学”，也就是我们现在所说的科学。16 世纪出现了许多科学突破，例如哥白尼的宇宙围绕太阳旋转的理论和维萨里对人体解剖学的研究，这些突破牢固地确立了科学而不是宗教是我们了解自然世界的来源。但哲学家弗朗西斯·培根意识到，不能简单地观察某件事似乎如此，并得出结论说在每种情况下都是如此，而是必须提供一个可靠的框架——一种通过实验来检验新理论的科学方法。

Western philosophy began with questions about the physical universe—what it is made of and how it is structured. Philosophers proposed increasingly sophisticated theories to explain the natural world by using their ability to reason, developing logical arguments based on what they observed around them. This process of observation and reasoning, which was first formally recognized as a method of inquiry by Aristotle, evolved into “natural philosophy,” what we now call science. The 16th century saw a number of scientific breakthroughs, such as Copernicus’s theory of a universe revolving around the sun and Vesalius’s investigations into human anatomy, which firmly established science rather than religion as the source of our knowledge of the natural world. But it was the philosopher Francis Bacon who realized that rather than simply observing that something appears to be the case, and concluding that it is so in every case, it was necessary to provide a reliable framework—a scientific method for testing new theories by experimentation.

科学进步

Scientific progress

凭借科学方法的权威，科学家们在科学革命时期取得了许多发现并提出了许多理论。科学发现了宇宙的一些基本原理：物理、化学和生物世界的定律。新发现产生了新的理论，每个理论都比以前的理论更为复杂。有时，突破性的发现或理论可能意味着思维的彻底改变——哲学家托马斯·库恩称之为“范式转变”。像这样的转折点，例如从牛顿物理学到爱因斯坦物理学的转变，标志着科学进步的方式，让我们对科学真理有了越来越完整的认识。但保罗·费耶拉班德认为，每次发生这样的转变时，所使用的概念和方法也会发生变化，因此没有一个永久的框架来确立这一真理。

Armed with the authority of a scientific method, scientists made discoveries and proposed theories in a period sometimes called the Scientific Revolution. Science discovered some underlying principles of the universe: the laws of physics, chemistry, and the living world. New discoveries produced new theories, each more sophisticated than the ones before. Sometimes, a breakthrough discovery or theory may mean a complete change in thinking—what the philosopher Thomas Kuhn calls a “paradigm shift.” Turning points like this, such as the move from Newtonian to Einsteinian physics, characterize the way that science progresses, giving us an increasingly complete knowledge of scientific truth. But Paul Feyeraband suggested that each time such a shift occurs, the concepts and methods used change too, so there is no permanent framework for establishing this truth.

未解答的问题

Unanswered questions

自科学革命以来，科学的进步促使哲学思想的重点发生了变化。随着物理学和化学越来越多地解答了有关宇宙物质和结构的问题，哲学家们更加关注存在的本质和意义，而不是其物理构成。最近，心理学和神经科学对我们的行为、思维方式以及我们获取知识的方式提供了深刻的见解。但科学并不能解释一切。它为我们提供了越来越多的有关物质世界和精神世界的知识，但道德问题和我们存在的意义似乎永远超出了科学的范围。

The progress of science from the Scientific Revolution onward has prompted a change in the emphasis of philosophical thinking. As the questions about the substance and structure of the universe were increasingly answered by physics and chemistry, philosophers focused more on the nature and meaning of existence than its physical makeup. More recently, psychology and neuroscience have provided great insights into our behavior, the working of our minds, and how we acquire knowledge. But science does not, and cannot, explain everything. It provides us with increasing knowledge of the physical world and our mental world, but questions of morality and the meaning of our existence will, it seems, always be outside the scope of science.

大爆炸

THE BIG BANG

科学解释往往会引发更多问题。科学为我们提供了大爆炸是宇宙起源的理论。我们本能地会问“在那之前发生了什么？”或“是什么导致了它？”但物理学家解释说，在那之前实际上什么都不存在，甚至时间也不存在，这再次挑战了我们对存在本质的哲学观念。

Often, scientific explanations raise yet more questions. Science has provided us with the theory that the Big Bang was the beginning of the universe. We instinctively ask the questions “What came before that?” or “What caused it?” But physicists explain that literally nothing, not even time, existed before that, challenging once again our philosophical ideas of the nature of existence.

参见：科学能解释我们的思维方式吗？|逻辑和科学有什么关系？

See also: Can science explain how our MINDS WORK? | What’s LOGIC got to do with science?

在现代社会，我们尤其能感受到时间的流逝。我们经历着季节的更迭和日子的流逝，我们发明了测量时间的方法，尽管时间很难定义。在我们经历人生的过程中，我们也将时间视为我们存在的一个基本方面。

In the modern world, we are especially aware of time passing. We experience the changing seasons and the passing days, and we have invented ways of measuring time, even though it is difficult to define. We also experience time as a fundamental aspect of our existence as we pass through life.

存在与变化

Existence and change

早期哲学家观察周围的世界时，发现宇宙看似复杂，事物随时间不断变化。为了理解现实的本质，他们寻求某种稳定性——寻找永恒不变的事物。世界的变化是需要解释的：例如，从不变、不变的元素或原子的组合和重新组合的角度来解释。然而，赫拉克利特承认宇宙在不断变化，但他表示，以前被认为是永恒不变的事物实际上处于“流动状态”。他解释说，正如我们无法两次踏入同一条溪流，因为它不断流动一样，我们也无法在不同时间以相同的方式体验世界。根据赫拉克利特的说法，现实不是由会发生变化的事物或物质组成，而是由随时间发生的过程组成。

Early philosophers looking at the world around them saw a seemingly complex universe in which things were constantly changing over time. In trying to understand the nature of reality, they sought some stability—to find the things that were eternal and unchanging. Change in the world was something to be explained: for example, in terms of the combining and recombining of immutable, unchanging elements or atoms. Heraclitus, however, accepted that the universe is changing constantly, but said that the things that were previously considered eternal and unchanging are, in fact, in a “state of flux.” He explained that, just as we can’t step in the same stream twice due to its continual flow, we cannot experience the world in the same way at different times. Reality, according to Heraclitus, consists not of things or substances that are subject to change, but of processes that happen over time.

时间意识

Conscious of time

许多世纪之后，伊曼纽尔·康德用“物自体”的世界来解释现实，它超越空间和时间，与我们体验的世界不同。虽然我们生活在一个空间和时间的世界里，但康德说我们并不直接体验时间，而是从世界上变化的事物中获得时间的感觉或印象——例如黑夜之后的白天，或者沙漏中沙子的流动。但德国哲学家格奥尔格·黑格尔认为，除了因为世界上变化的事物而意识到时​​间之外，我们也是我们所生活的世界的一部分，所以我们的意识本身也会发生变化。我们体验到时间的流逝是一个历史过程，在这个过程中，每个时期的精神—— 时代精神——都会随着新思想的出现而不可避免地发生变化。

Many centuries later, Immanuel Kant explained reality in terms of a world of “things-in-themselves,” which is outside space and time, unlike the world we experience. Although we live in a world of space and time, Kant said that we do not experience time directly, but get a sense or impression of time only from the things in the world that change—such as day following night, or the flow of sand in an hourglass. But German philosopher Georg Hegel suggested that in addition to being conscious of time because of the things in the world that change, we are a part of the world we live in, so our consciousness itself is subject to change. We experience the passage of time as a historical process, in which the spirit of each period of time—the Zeitgeist—changes inevitably as new ideas emerge.

我们的存在就是时间

Our being is time

20 世纪，法国哲学家亨利·柏格森受查尔斯·达尔文进化论的影响，将现实视为一个进化过程，一个连续体，类似于赫拉克利特的不断变化的流动概念。他还认为，我们对时间有着直接的内在体验，这是我们存在的本质。马丁·海德格尔从不同的角度得出了类似的结论。我们存在于空间和时间的世界中，除了意识到我们在其中的物理位置之外，我们不仅知道我们的现在，还知道未来和过去，并且知道我们的生命有始有终。我们不仅仅是体验时间——我们的存在实际上就是时间。尽管这种观点很有影响力，但一些哲学家仍然认为时间是人类感知的一个方面，而不是现实的一个方面。

In the 20th century, French philosopher Henri Bergson, influenced by Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution, regarded reality as an evolutionary process, a continuum, similar to Heraclitus’s notion of a constantly shifting flow. He also argued that we have a direct inner experience of time, and that this is the essential nature of our existence. Martin Heidegger came to a similar conclusion, from a different perspective. We exist in the world of space and time, and in addition to being aware of our physical place in it, we are aware of not just our present, but a future and past too, and that our lives have a beginning and an end. We do not simply experience time—our being actually is time. Despite this influential view, some philosophers continue to argue that time is an aspect of human perception, rather than one of reality.

我们生命中的时光

正如我们知道我们在物质世界中的位置——我们与宇宙中其他事物的关系——我们也知道我们在时间中的位置。我们通过时间的流逝来定义我们的存在。

Just as we are aware of our place in the physical world—where we are in relation to other things in the universe—we are also aware of our place in time. We define our existence through the passing of time.

回到未来

BACK TO THE FUTURE

物理学理论表明时间旅行是可能的。这引发了关于时间本质以及存在和身份的有趣哲学问题。例如，如果我回到过去并在我父亲出生前杀死了我的祖父，那就意味着我从未存在过。如果我拜访年轻时的自己，警告自己所犯的错误，我永远不会犯同样的错误。

Theories in physics suggest that time travel may be possible. This raises interesting philosophical problems about the nature of time, and also of existence and identity. For example, if I traveled to the past and killed my grandfather before my father was born, it would mean that I never came to exist. And if I visited my younger self, to warn myself about the mistakes I made, I would never make them.

参见：我们所知的世界只是一个幻觉吗？

See also: Is the world we know an ILLUSION?

研究生存问题的哲学家们越来越多地将目光从他们周围的世界转向我们在这个世界中的位置。有些人研究人类生存的本质——我们作为个体如何生存，以及我们是否能找到生命的意义。

Philosophers examining questions of existence increasingly turned from the world around them to our place in that world. Some examined the nature of human existence—how we exist as individuals, and whether we can find meaning in our lives.

自由思考

有些哲学家认为，每个人都有自由，可以做任何自己想做的事。我们不必生活在社会的束缚之下。

Some philosophers believe that individuals are free to do anything they want with their lives. We do not have to live within the constraints of our society.

我们可以自由选择

We are free to choose

19 世纪丹麦哲学家索伦·克尔凯郭尔是研究人类存在意义的最著名哲学家之一。他认为，由于许多关于存在的哲学解释与我们的个人经验相矛盾，我们有能力做出塑造我们生活的选择。他认为，我们有自由做出关于如何生活的道德决定，正是这一点赋予了我们的生活意义。然而，这种选择自由并不一定能给我们带来任何幸福。相反，当我们意识到我们可以完全自由地选择做任何事情时，我们的头脑就会晕眩，我们会感到恐惧和焦虑。克尔凯郭尔所说的这种“自由的眩晕”来自于我们对自己存在和个人责任的认识。然后，我们必须决定这是否会导致绝望并选择什么也不做，还是“真实地”生活，做出赋予我们生活意义的选择。

One of the best-known philosophers to look at what it means to exist as a human was Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard, in the 19th century. He believed that since many philosophical explanations of existence were at odds with our individual experience, we have the ability to make choices that shape our lives. We have the freedom, he argued, to make moral decisions about how we lead our lives, and it is this that can give our lives meaning. However, this freedom of choice does not necessarily bring us any happiness. On the contrary, when we realize that we are absolutely free to choose to do anything, our minds reel, and we have feelings of dread and anxiety. This “dizziness of freedom,” as Kierkegaard called it, comes from an awareness of our own existence and personal responsibility. We then have to decide whether this leads to despair and choosing to do nothing, or to living “authentically,” making choices that give meaning to our lives.

发挥潜力

Realizing potential

其他哲学家接受了克尔凯郭尔的观点，即我们可以自由地为自己塑造生活。例如，弗里德里希·尼采认为，每个人都应该发挥自己的潜力，而不是遵循传统或宗教所规定的决定。后来，埃德蒙德·胡塞尔认为，如果像伊曼纽尔·康德所说的那样，存在一个独立于空间和时间的物自体世界，而我们无法理解或体验它，那么我们对这个世界的任何想法都只是猜测。我们不妨在所有实际目的上忽略它，专注于我们所体验的世界。胡塞尔称之为生活世界——我们生活的世界。这种专注于我们自身体验的主观方法后来被马丁·海德格尔所接受。海德格尔认为，哲学试图找到存在的解释，但要理解存在，我们首先需要审视我们自己和我们自己的存在——存在对我们意味着什么。

Other philosophers took up Kierkegaard’s idea that we are free to shape our lives for ourselves. Friedrich Nietzsche, for example, argued it was up to each individual to realize his or her own potential, rather than follow decisions dictated by convention or religion. Later, Edmund Husserl took the view that if, as Immanuel Kant had argued, there is a world of things-in-themselves, separate from space and time, which we have no means of understanding or experiencing, any ideas we have of that world are simply speculation. We might as well ignore it for all practical purposes, and concentrate on the world as we experience it. Husserl called this the Lebenswelt—the world we live in. This subjective approach, concentrating on our own experience, was then taken up by Martin Heidegger. Heidegger argued that philosophy has tried to find explanations of existence, but to understand existence we first need to examine ourselves and our own existence—what it means for us to exist.

生命的意义

The meaning of life

海德格尔的思想对下一代哲学家影响很大，尤其是在法国。存在主义这个术语被创造出来，用来描述 20 世纪下半叶出现的哲学。这种哲学考察了人类的存在——特别是在一个越来越拒绝上帝和宗教的世界中寻找生命的意义或目的。这些哲学家中的佼佼者是让-保罗·萨特，他说我们无法选择存在——我们出生在一个注定要生活的世界——但一旦我们意识到自己的存在，我们就必须创造自己的人生目标，赋予它意义。阿尔伯特·加缪和萨特一样，既是小说家，也是哲学家，他的态度更悲观。他认为，我们的生活本质上没有任何目的，为了应对来自自我意识的焦虑，我们可以选择接受存在的徒劳和荒谬，或者选择根本不存在。

Heidegger’s ideas were very influential on the next generation of philosophers, especially in France. The term existentialism was coined to describe the philosophy that emerged in the second half of the 20th century. This philosophy examined human existence—in particular, the search for meaning or purpose in life in a world that had increasingly rejected God and religion. Foremost among these philosophers was Jean-Paul Sartre, who said that we do not choose to exist—we are born into a world that we are bound to live in—but once we reach an awareness of our own existence, we have to create our own purpose in life to give it meaning. Albert Camus, who like Sartre was a novelist as well as a philosopher, was more pessimistic. He took the view that there was essentially no purpose to be found in our lives, and to deal with the anxiety that comes from our self-awareness, we have a choice of either accepting the futility and absurdity of existence, or choosing not to exist at all.

存在焦虑

EXISTENTIAL ANGST

索伦·克尔凯郭尔将我们意识到自己的存在和可以做出的选择时所感受到的焦虑描述为“存在焦虑”，类似于站在悬崖边的感觉。我们感到焦虑不仅是因为我们害怕跌落，还因为我们有一种想跳下去的冲动。我们意识到只有我们自己才能决定是否跳下去。

Søren Kierkegaard described the anxiety we feel when we become aware of our existence and the choices we can make—“existential angst”—as being similar to the feeling of standing on the edge of a cliff. We are anxious not only because we have a fear of falling, but also because we experience an impulse to throw ourselves off. We realize that only we can decide whether we jump or not.

参见：你永远不可能知道一切|我们所知的世界只是幻觉吗？|时间是什么？

See also: You can NEVER know it ALL | Is the world we know an ILLUSION? | What is TIME?

许多宗教的核心信仰是，除了肉体之外，人死后还有灵魂继续存在。然而，哲学家们对不朽灵魂是否存在持有不同意见。一些人认为我们确实有“灵魂”，它是非物质的、永恒的，而另一些人则认为，灵魂会随着肉体一起消亡。

It is a central belief of many religions that in addition to our physical bodies, we have a soul that lives on after death. Opinion has been divided among philosophers, however, as to the existence of an immortal soul. Some have argued that we do have a “spirit,” which is immaterial and eternal, while others believed that this perishes with our physical bodies.

永恒的心灵

The eternal psyche

在西方哲学的大部分历史中，很少有哲学家怀疑我们的存在既有物质成分，又有非物质成分。然而，他们信仰的不同之处在于我们存在的非物质部分的性质。例如，苏格拉底和柏拉图认为，人类既拥有肉体，又拥有心灵，这相当于我们今天所说的灵魂、精神或思想。根据柏拉图的说法，心灵是一个人的真正本质，由三个要素组成：逻各斯（思想或理性）、激情（情感或精神）和爱欲（欲望或食欲）。通过我们的感官，我们的肉体体验着日常世界，但我们的心灵让我们能够进入一个完美的世界，这个世界与我们生活的世界不同，他称其为思想世界。心灵既是永恒的，又是非物质的，柏拉图认为，我们对这个另一个世界的先天知识是我们出生前心灵存在的记忆。我们死后，心灵会在其他肉体中重生。

For much of the history of Western philosophy, few philosophers doubted that we have both physical and nonmaterial components to our existence. Where their beliefs differed, however, was in the nature of the nonmaterial part of our being. Socrates and Plato, for example, believed that humans possess both a physical body and a psyche, which corresponds to what we today call a soul, spirit, or mind. The psyche, according to Plato, is the true essence of a person, and consists of three elements: the logos (mind or reason), thymos (emotion or spirit), and eros (desire or appetite). Through our senses, our physical bodies experience the everyday world, but our psyches give us access to a perfect world, separate from the one we live in, which he called the world of ideas. The psyche is both eternal and immaterial, and Plato argued that our innate knowledge of this other world is a memory of our psyche from its existence before we were born. After our death, the psyche is reborn in other physical bodies.

身体与灵魂

Body and soul

亚里士多德对心灵有着截然不同的解释。首先，他认为心灵并非独立于肉体而存在，而是任何生物的本质，是其存在的目的。从这个意义上讲，所有生物（不仅仅是人类）都具有某种形式的“灵魂”，从简单的植物灵魂（其心灵以生长和繁殖为目的）到动物灵魂（其生命目的更为复杂）再到人类心灵（包括智力和情感）。所有生物的心灵都与其肉体存在密不可分，亚里士多德认为，没有心灵就没有生物，没有肉体就没有灵魂。由于所有生物都会死，因此它们的心灵也会随它们一起消亡。

Aristotle had a very different explanation of the psyche. For one thing, he thought that the psyche does not exist separately from the physical body, but is the essence of any living thing—the purpose of its being. All living things, not just humans, have some form of “soul” in this sense, ranging from the simple souls of plants whose psyches are characterized by their purpose of growing and reproducing, through animals with more complex purposes in life, to human psyches that include intellect and emotion. The psyches of all living organisms are inseparable from their physical existence, and for Aristotle there can be no living organism without a psyche, nor a soul without a physical body. And since all living creatures are mortal, their psyches die with them.

精神继续传承

柏拉图对心灵的定义包括思想、情感和欲望——我们现在将其等同于心灵。与许多宗教一样，他断言灵魂在我们死后继续存在。

Plato’s definition of the psyche encompassed ideas, emotions, and desires—what we now equate with the mind. Like many religions, he asserted that the soul lives on after we die.

这是信仰问题

It’s a matter of faith

如今，灵魂一词对我们而言具有与亚里士多德的心灵概念不同的意义，并带有宗教含义。灵魂不朽的概念是人死后在另一个世界继续存在，这是基督教和伊斯兰教的核心内容，这两种宗教都将柏拉图和亚里士多德关于心灵存在的论证融入到各自的教义中。在东方（尤其是印度）哲学中，人们几乎理所当然地认为“自我”会不断经历生死轮回，灵魂会在另一个肉体中转世。然而，相信灵魂不朽，就像相信上帝存在一样，归根结底是信仰问题，而非哲学问题。但即使他们拒绝灵魂不朽的概念，许多哲学家也承认，我们的存在可能不仅仅是肉体，还有一种非物质的东西，我们称之为心灵。

The word soul has a different meaning to us today from Aristotle’s notion of psyche, and carries with it religious connotations. The idea of an immortal soul that lives on after death in another world is a central element in Christianity and Islam, and both religions incorporated Plato’s and Aristotle’s arguments for the existence of a psyche into their doctrines. In Eastern (especially Indian) philosophy, the idea of a “self” continually going through a cycle of birth and rebirth, in which the soul is reincarnated in another physical body, is virtually taken for granted. Belief in an immortal soul, however, like belief in the existence of God, is ultimately a matter of faith rather than philosophy. But even if they rejected the idea of the immortality of the soul, many philosophers accepted that there may be more to our being than simply our physical bodies—a nonmaterial something, which we call the mind.

原子论者

THE ATOMISTS

最早质疑灵魂不朽的哲学家是原子论者留基伯和德谟克利特。他们并不否认我们有灵魂，但提出灵魂和其他一切事物一样，都是由原子构成的，人死后灵魂会分散，在其他地方重新组合成其他东西。后来，伊壁鸠鲁认为，如果除了原子和空虚空间之外什么都不存在，那么就不存在非物质的灵魂。

Among the first philosophers to dispute the immortality of the soul were the atomists Leucippus and Democritus. They didn’t deny that we have a soul, but proposed that it, like everything else, is made of atoms, and that after death souls disperse and reform elsewhere as other things. Later, Epicurus argued that if nothing exists except atoms and empty space, there can be no such thing as a nonmaterial soul.

参见：知识源于推理|我们所知的世界是 幻觉吗？

See also: Knowledge comes from REASONING | Is the world we know an ILLUSION?

我们用感官体验事物，但也有思想和感觉，这些思想和感觉是精神上的，而不是身体上的。一些哲学家得出结论，我们有一个心灵，它不是由任何物质构成的，它独立于我们的身体而存在。另一些人则认为心灵是身体固有的一部分。

We experience things with our senses, but also have thoughts and feelings that are mental rather than physical. Some philosophers have concluded that we have a mind, not made of any material substance, that exists apart from our physical body. Others argue that the mind is an inherent part of the body.

独立思想

An independent mind

为了将自己的哲学建立在自己不容怀疑的事物之上，勒内·笛卡尔得出结论：他可以确信自己是一个会思考的存在体 — — 我思故我在 （“我思故我在”）。他意识到自己的感官可能会被欺骗，而且由于他将感官与自己的肉体联系起来，因此他得出​​结论：存在并思考的存在体必定独立于他的身体 — — 一个没有物质实体的心灵。他补充说，我们的身体纯粹是物理的，行为方式像机器，而我们的心灵则能够思考和推理。这种认为我们的心灵和身体是两个不同的东西的观点被称为心身二元论，与宗教认为我们有灵魂的观念有很多共同之处。然而，笛卡尔描述的心灵是我们精神而非灵性存在的领域。

In an attempt to base his philosophy on only the things he could not doubt, René Descartes came to the conclusion that he could be sure of his existence as a thinking being—cogito ergo sum (“I think, therefore I am”). His senses, he realized, could be deceived, and since he associated these with his physical body, he concluded that the being that existed and was thinking must be independent of his body—a mind with no material substance. Our bodies, he added, are purely physical, and behave like machines, whereas our minds are capable of thinking and reasoning. This idea that our mind and body are two distinct things, known as mind-body dualism, has much in common with the religious notion that we have a soul. The mind that Descartes describes, however, is the realm of our mental, rather than spiritual, being.

心灵与身体的交汇

A meeting of mind and body

将心灵和身体视为独立而不同的实体的一个主要问题是，两者显然相互作用。如果身体只是一台机器，那么它的行为必须由心灵控制。同样，心灵要体验外部世界，就必须从感官接收信息。对于接受身心二元论的哲学家来说，明显的连接点是在大脑中，笛卡尔甚至认为两者之间的接口是松果体，他将其描述为“灵魂的宝座”。但荷兰哲学家本尼迪克特斯·斯宾诺莎提出了解决这个问题的不同方法。他提出，我们和宇宙中的一切都不是由肉体和非物质的心灵组成的，而是完全由物质构成。然而，这种物质有两种不同的属性——物理属性和精神属性。在他的“属性二元论”中，我们的肉体（斯宾诺莎认为，所有物质的东西——甚至岩石——也具有非物质的精神属性）。对于斯宾诺莎来说，这个想法具有宗教意义，因为他相信这种物质实体就是上帝：上帝是宇宙和宇宙中的一切，所有这些都具有精神和物理属性。

A major problem of considering the mind and the body as separate and distinct entities is that the two obviously interact. If the body is simply a machine, its actions must be controlled by the mind. Similarly, for the mind to experience the external world, it must receive information from the senses. For a philosopher who accepts mind-body dualism, the obvious point of connection is in the brain, and Descartes went as far as to suggest that the interface between the two is the pineal gland, which he described as the “seat of the soul.” But the Dutch philosopher Benedictus Spinoza suggested a different solution to this problem. He proposed that instead of consisting of a physical body and a nonmaterial mind, we, and everything in the universe, are made solely of a material substance. That substance, however, has two distinct kinds of properties—physical and mental. In his “property dualism,” as it became known, our physical bodies (and, Spinoza believed, all physical things—even rocks) also have nonphysical, mental attributes. For Spinoza, the idea had religious significance, since he believed that this one material substance is God: God is the universe and everything in it, all of which has both mental and physical properties.

机器里的幽灵

A ghost in the machine

有些哲学家不接受二元论的思想，即精神和身体之间存在区别。尤其是在 20 世纪，人们认为精神事件可以用大脑的物理运作来解释。英国哲学家吉尔伯特·赖尔驳斥了精神和身体分离的思想，他说，我们可能会被误导，以为机器有意识，而事实上，它只是在做它被设计来做的任务。他认为，我们所看到的只是“机器里的幽灵”。同样，笛卡尔认为的独立思想实际上是我们身体的一个组成部分——它们的工作方式和行为方式。

Some philosophers did not accept the dualist idea of a distinction between the mental and physical. Especially in the 20th century, there was a feeling that mental events could be explained in terms of the physical workings of the brain. English philosopher Gilbert Ryle dismissed the idea of a separate mind and body by saying that we can be tricked into thinking that a machine has a conscious mind, when in fact it is just doing the task it is designed for. All we are seeing, he argued, is a “ghost in the machine.” Similarly, what Descartes regarded as a separate mind is actually an integral part of our physical bodies—the way that they work and how they behave.

物理主义

PHYSICALISM

一群被称为物理主义者的哲学家认为，世界上存在的一切都可以用物理术语来解释。这并不意味着一切都具有物理实体，而是我们的心理体验可以用我们大脑的生理学或我们对某些行为的倾向来解释。但他们认为，物理事件必须有物理原因，非物理的思想不可能对物理身体的行为产生影响。

A group of philosophers called physicalists believe that everything that exists in the world can be explained in physical terms. This does not mean that everything has a physical substance, but that our mental experiences, for instance, can be explained in terms of the physiology of our brains, or our disposition toward certain kinds of behavior. But physical events, they argue, must have physical causes, and a nonphysical mind could have no effect on the behavior of a physical body.

参见：不要认为任何事都是理所当然的|您是否 像我一样有这种感觉？

See also: Take NOTHING for granted | Do you FEEL like I do?

作为人类，我们可以通过感官体验周围的世界，我们有思想和感觉。我们也意识到这些体验——我们意识到自己的感觉和心理过程。但意识是一种个人的东西，很难准确定义什么是有意识。

As humans, we can experience the world around us through our senses, and we have thoughts and feelings. We are also aware of having these experiences—we are conscious of our sensations and mental processes. But Consciousness is a personal thing, and it is difficult to define exactly what it is like to be conscious.

意识到我们的存在

Being aware of our existence

几乎所有哲学家都承认思想和感觉等非物质事物的存在。即使是物理主义者，他们拒绝承认存在与身体分离的非物质心灵，也承认我们有想法和感知，但认为这些可以用我们身体和大脑的物理构成来解释。然而，我们都知道这些心理体验，并意识到我们既有心理存在，也有物理存在。我们有物理感觉——通过感官看到、听到、闻到、触摸到和尝到的东西——我们意识到有这些感觉。我们也有思想、记忆和感觉，这些都是纯粹的精神现象。我们对这些心理现象的认识，或许更重要的是我们的自我意识，就是我们作为意识所体验到的。

Almost all philosophers would acknowledge the existence of nonmaterial things such as thoughts and feelings. Even physicalists, who reject the notion of an immaterial mind that is separate from the body, recognize that we have ideas and perceptions, but argue that these can be explained in terms of the physical makeup of our bodies and brains. We are, however, all aware of these mental experiences, and conscious of having both a mental and physical existence. We have physical sensations—what we see, hear, smell, touch, and taste through our sense organs—and we are conscious of having them. We also have thoughts, memories, and feelings, which are purely mental. Our awareness of these mental phenomena, and perhaps more importantly our self-awareness, is what we experience as consciousness.

一堆感觉

A bundle of sensations

然而，认为意识是对感觉、思想和情感的觉察这一概念也带来了问题。客观地审视意识是不可能的。我只能审视自己的意识，无法直接了解别人的意识。我知道自己有意识是什么感觉，但不知道别人有意识是什么感觉。我们对意识的概念必然是主观的，很难进一步定义，只能描述我们每个人作为有意识的存在是什么样的。然而，我们都对这种“它是什么样的”有一个概念，而这正是让我们有自我感觉的一部分。苏格兰哲学家大卫休谟认为，我们有思想、经历和记忆——他将其描述为“感觉束”——它们共同构成了我们认识到的自我主观意识。

The notion that consciousness is an awareness of sensations, thoughts, and feelings raises problems, however. It is impossible to examine consciousness objectively. I can only look at my own conscious mind, and I cannot have direct access to someone else’s consciousness. I know what it is like for me to have a conscious experience, but not for someone other than myself. Our concepts of consciousness are necessarily subjective, and difficult to define further than a description of what it is like for each of us to be a conscious being. Yet we all have an idea of this “what-it’s-likeness,” and this is part of what gives us a feeling of self. Scottish philosopher David Hume suggested that we have thoughts, experiences, and memories—what he described as a “bundle of sensations”—that together form the subjective consciousness we recognize as our self.

顺应潮流

威廉·詹姆斯将意识描述为一条溪流——一直在变化。当我们体验新事物时，我们的大脑会解读这些信息并相应地组织我们的想法。

William James described consciousness as being like a stream—changing all the time. As we experience new things, our minds interpret the information and organize our thoughts accordingly.

不断变化的意识

Continually changing consciousness

哲学家威廉·詹姆斯 (William James) 也是心理学的先驱之一，他试图对意识做出更科学的解释。他认识到，我们的大脑不仅从周围的外部世界接收感官知觉，而且还会通过心理过程来解释这些信息。我们会整理自己对所经历事物的想法和观点，将它们联系起来并将它们存储在记忆中。在生活中，我们不断体验新事物，这些新感知会引发新的想法和观点。因此，詹姆斯说，意识不应被视为一种精神状态，而应被视为一个不断变化的过程。他称之为“意识流”，这对我们每个人来说都是个人的。

William James, a philosopher, but also one of the pioneers of psychology, attempted to give a more scientific explanation of consciousness. He recognized that our minds not only receive sensory perceptions from the external world around us, but also go through mental processes to interpret that information. We organize our thoughts and ideas about the things we experience, making connections between them and storing them in our memories. As we go through life, we are constantly experiencing new things, and these new perceptions prompt new thoughts and ideas. So, James said, consciousness should not be considered as a state of mind, but rather as a continually changing process. He called this a “stream of consciousness,” which is personal to each of us.

科学方法

A SCIENTIFIC APPROACH

意识等概念凸显了心灵哲学的一个问题，即我们只能直接体验自己心灵中发生的事情。正因为如此，它倾向于主观和内省，被认为是不科学的。在类似领域工作的科学家试图让他们对心灵运作的研究有一个更客观、更科学的基础，由此产生了心理学这门新科学。

Notions such as consciousness highlight one of the problems of the philosophy of mind, which is that we can only directly experience what is going on in our own minds. Because of this, it has a tendency to be subjective and introspective, and is considered to be unscientific. Scientists working in similar fields sought to give their investigations into the workings of the mind a more objective, scientific foundation, and from this emerged the new science of psychology.

参见：计算机能思考吗？|科学能解释我们的思维如何运作吗？

See also: Can COMPUTERS think? | Can science explain how our MINDS WORK?

直到最近，许多哲学家还认为人类与其他动物有所不同，因为人类拥有优越的推理能力。然而，今天大多数人认识到动物也会感到疼痛，而且许多动物都有推理能力。动物的思维真的与我们如此不同吗？

Until quite recently, many philosophers viewed humans as somehow different from other animals because of their supposed superior powers of reasoning. Today, however, most people recognize that animals feel pain too, and that many animals have the ability to reason. Are animals’ minds really so different from our own?

周到的爪子

笛卡尔认为，动物只是对感官刺激作出反应，不会思考或感受。后来的哲学家认为，既然人类本身是动物，其他动物也必须遭受同样的痛苦。

René Descartes believed that animals simply react to the stimulation of their senses, and do not think or feel. Later philosophers have argued that since humans themselves are animals, other animals must suffer in the same way.

生物机器

Biological machines

在西方世界，从第一批希腊哲学家时代到 19 世纪，人们普遍认为人类与动物的区别在于拥有不朽的灵魂。即使哲学家们将注意力从灵魂的概念转移到思考思想和推理能力，推理仍被认为是人类独有的能力。例如，勒内·笛卡尔认为，思想与身体是分开的，但只存在于人类身上。他认为，动物没有推理能力，因此没有思想——它们只是像机械玩具一样运转的生物机器。

In the Western world, from the time of the first Greek philosophers until the 19th century, it was generally believed that what distinguished humans from animals was the possession of an immortal soul. Even as philosophers shifted their attention away from the concept of a soul to thinking about the mind and our ability to reason, reasoning was considered a uniquely human ability. René Descartes, for example, argued that the mind is separate from the physical body, but only in humans. Animals, he believed, are incapable of reasoning and therefore have no minds—they are simply biological machines that behave like mechanical toys.

人类动物

The human animal

动物是没有灵魂、没有思想的生物这一观念一直存在，直到查尔斯·达尔文用他的进化论挑战了传统思维。除其他外，进化论表明人类是自然界的一部分。随着这一认识的提高，人们逐渐意识到，如果我们只是动物世界中的另一个物种，那么它们可能具有我们曾认为是人类独有的特征。人们对动物的态度迅速改变，动物是有意识、有感觉的生物这一观念逐渐深入人心。这导致了防止虐待和剥削动物的运动，因为人们质疑血腥运动和动物实验的道德性，并且在 20 世纪，越来越多的人坚持认为杀死动物作为食物是不道德的。

The idea that animals are soulless, mindless creatures persisted widely until Charles Darwin challenged conventional thinking with his theory of evolution. Among other things, this demonstrated that humans evolved as part of the natural world. With this came a growing realization that if we are simply another species in the world of animals, they may share characteristics that we had assumed were uniquely human. Attitudes toward animals changed rapidly, and the idea that they were conscious beings, capable of feeling, gained ground. This led to movements to prevent cruelty to and exploitation of animals, as people questioned the morality of blood sports and animal experimentation, and during the 20th century a growing number of people have insisted that killing animals for food is unethical.

动物权利

Animal rights

随着至少有些动物能够感受到痛苦这一观点被普遍接受，哲学家们又回到了动物在多大程度上可以被认为像我们一样思考的问题上。澳大利亚哲学家彼得·辛格认为，如果动物能够感受到痛苦，而我们认为造成不必要的痛苦是错误的，那么让它们遭受不必要的痛苦在道德上也是错误的。他认为，动物和人类一样，拥有生存和免受不必要痛苦的自然权利。然而，只有少数人接受了动物权利的概念，并对其提出了一些批评。例如，动物经常用于医学研究，以寻找减轻人类痛苦的治疗方法。在这种情况下，似乎我们的权利高于动物的权利。我们也倾向于赋予哺乳动物的权利比无脊椎动物更高的价值：例如，人们对杀害小海豹的行为表示强烈抗议，但我们毫不犹豫地请灭虫员来清除房屋里的白蚁。有人认为，当我们谈论动物权利时，我们犯了拟人化的错误——将我们自己的想法和感受投射到动物身上。一些现代哲学家说，我们应该反省自己的道德观，尤其是把动物当作达到目的的手段、食物来源或实验对象。

As the view that at least some animals can feel pain became generally accepted, philosophers returned to questions of how much animals can be considered to think like us. Australian philosopher Peter Singer argued that if animals are able to experience pain, and we believe that it is wrong to inflict unnecessary pain, then it is morally wrong to subject them to unnecessary suffering. He suggested that animals, like humans, have natural rights to life and freedom from needless distress. The notion of animal rights was accepted only by a minority, however, and several criticisms were leveled against it. For example, animals are often used in medical research, in order to find treatments to ease human suffering. In this case, it seems that our rights outweigh those of the animals. We also tend to place a higher value on the rights of mammals than on those of invertebrates: There is an outcry at the killing of baby seals, for instance, but we have no qualms about calling in exterminators to clear a house of termites. It has been suggested that when we talk of animal rights, we are guilty of anthropomorphism—projecting our own ideas and feelings onto animals. Some modern philosophers say that we should instead examine our own morality, especially in treating animals as a means to an end, as a source of food, or as subjects of our experiments.

实验室老鼠

LAB RATS

进行动物实验的主要原因之一是避免不道德的试验给人类受试者带来痛苦和困扰。例如，心理学家观察了老鼠的行为，以深入了解人类思维的运作方式。这假设它们的思维与我们相似——但如果它们相似，就会引发一个问题：对它们进行实验是否合乎道德。如果不是，这样的实验不会告诉我们有关人类思维的任何信息。

One of the main reasons for animal experimentation is to avoid unethical trials causing pain and distress to human subjects. Psychologists have observed the behavior of rats, for example, to give an insight into the workings of the human mind. This assumes that their minds are similar to ours—but if they are, it raises the question of whether it is ethical to experiment on them. And if they are not, such experiments will tell us nothing about the human mind.

参见：存在不朽的灵魂吗？|你的思想 与你的身体是分开的吗？

See also: Is there such a thing as an IMMORTAL soul? | Is your MIND separate from your BODY?

当我们与他人互动时，我们理所当然地认为他们的想法和感受与我们非常相似。我们每个人都知道经历痛苦或快乐是什么感觉，以及我们对这些感受的反应。但我们无法看透别人的内心，那么我们如何知道他们的想法和感受与我们一样呢？

When we interact with others, we take it for granted that they have thoughts and feelings much like ours. Each of us knows what it is like to experience pain or pleasure, and how we react to those feelings. But we can’t look inside other people’s minds, so how do we know they think and feel the same way as we do?

这是一种主观体验

It’s a subjective experience

哲学家在思考人类心灵时面临的一个大问题是，每个人的体验方式是否相同。勒内·笛卡尔等哲学家主要通过内省思考（检查自己的心灵和心理过程）得出心灵理论，并假设其他人的心灵运作方式大致相同。但一些哲学家指出，我们心灵的内容是个人的，对其他人来说是隐藏的——我们无法直接接触它。我们只能直接知道自己的心灵在想什么，从单个案例中得出结论对任何理论来说都是不可靠的基础。我有什么理由相信我对痛苦和快乐等事物的主观体验，甚至我自己的意识，与其他人是一样的？

One of the big problems for philosophers considering the human mind is whether or not everyone experiences things in the same way. Philosophers such as René Descartes arrived at their theories of the mind largely through introspective thinking—examining their own minds and mental processes—and made the assumption that other people’s minds work in much the same way. But some philosophers pointed out that the content of our minds is personal and hidden from everybody else—we have no direct access to it. We can only know directly what goes on in our own minds, and drawing conclusions from a single case is a shaky basis for any theory. What justification do I have for believing that my subjective experience of things such as pain and pleasure, and even my own consciousness, is the same as everyone else’s?

每个人肯定都会感到痛苦吧？

Surely everyone feels pain?

有一种常识性论点支持我们的直觉，即其他人的思维方式与我们的直觉相似，其依据是他们的行为。例如，我知道当我的头撞到门上时，我会感到疼痛，并且会做出某种行为反应，例如皱眉、说“哎哟”，甚至咒骂。当我看到其他人撞头并做出类似行为反应时，我推断他们也在经历痛苦。我们认识到普遍的行为，例如哭泣或大笑，并本能地将它们与引起我们相同反应的主观感受联系起来。既然我们对外部刺激的反应都相似，那么得出我们都经历相同想法和感受、我们的思维方式相似这样的结论是否合理？

There is a common-sense argument that backs up our intuitive feeling that other people’s minds work in a similar way, using the evidence of their behavior. I know that when I hit my head on a door, for example, I experience the sensation of pain, and I respond with a certain kind of behavior, such as wincing, saying “ouch,” or even swearing. When I see other people banging their heads and responding with similar behavior, I infer that they are experiencing pain, too. We recognize universal kinds of behavior, such as crying or laughing, and associate those instinctively with the subjective feelings we have that provoke the same reactions in us. Since we all show similar responses to external stimuli, is it not reasonable to conclude that we all experience the same thoughts and feelings, and that our minds work in a similar way?

陷入沉思

我们总以为自己知道别人在想什么、感受什么，但我们无法直接看透他们的内心。我们必须从他们的行为中推断出他们的想法和感受。

We like to think we know what other people are thinking and feeling, but we cannot see directly into their minds. We must infer what they think and feel from their behavior.

也许我们都不同

Maybe we’re all different

但常识论证仍然只基于一个观察结果——我自己的思想——就得出关于他人思想的结论。我怎么知道，因为每个人对事物的反应都一样，所以他们都感受到了同样的感觉？一个女人走进门后大喊“哎哟”，这可能只是在模仿一个痛苦的人的行为，而不是真正感受到这种感觉。同样，她看到的红色的东西可能是我看到的蓝色。因为她的内心体验对我是隐藏的，我无法直接知道她感受到了什么或看到了什么，只能从她的行为或她告诉我的事情中间接推断出来。但也许这就足够了：毕竟，我们接受的是遥远地方的二手描述，而没有亲身经历过。

But the common-sense argument still draws conclusions about other minds based on just a single observation—my own mind. How can I know that because everybody reacts in the same way to things, they are all feeling the same sensations? A woman shouting “ouch” after walking into a door may just be mimicking the behavior of someone in pain, and not actually experiencing the sensation. In the same way, something she sees as red may be what I see as blue. Because her inner experiences are hidden from me, I cannot know firsthand what she is feeling or seeing, but only infer this indirectly from her behavior or what she tells me. But perhaps this is enough: After all, we accept secondhand descriptions of faraway places without having personally experienced them.

哲学僵尸

PHILOSOPHICAL ZOMBIES

在哲学中，僵尸并不是好莱坞电影中的不死怪物。相反，他们是外表和行为都与我们相似，但实际上没有意识的人。如果你打僵尸，它会像我们一样做出反应，但感觉不到疼痛。哲学家们用僵尸的概念来反驳“所有人性都纯粹由物理原因造成”的观点：我们有意识的精神体验——我们的思想——将我们与僵尸区分开来。

In philosophy, zombies are not the undead monsters of Hollywood films. Rather, they are people that look and behave like us, but who actually have no consciousness. If you hit a zombie, it reacts as we would, but feels no pain. Philosophers have used the concept of zombies to dispute the idea that all of human nature has purely physical causes: It is our conscious mental experience—our mind—that distinguishes us from zombies.

参见：什么是意识？

See also: What is CONSCIOUSNESS?

我们每个人都是独一无二的个体。我们每个人都有不同于其他人的身体，但也有“自我”——包括我们的想法、感受和记忆的个人身份。我们一生中在身体和心理上都会发生很大变化，但我们仍然觉得我们拥有相同的身份。

Each of us is a unique individual. We each have a physical body that is distinct from everybody else’s, but also a “self”—a personal identity that includes our thoughts, feelings, and memories. We change a lot, physically and psychologically, throughout our lives, yet still feel we have the same identity.

忒修斯之船

The ship of Theseus

有一个老笑话，讲的是一个木匠用同一把锤子工作了 50 年，只换了三个新锤头和两个新锤柄，这告诉我们一些关于我们对身份的本能态度。哲学家托马斯·霍布斯用一个类似的故事探讨了我们随着时间推移而改变的个人身份观念。他说，忒修斯进行了一次漫长的海上航行，在旅途中他的船需要大修。渐渐地，船的每个部件都被换成了新部件，但我们仍然认为结束航行的那艘船是同一艘船，尽管原来的船什么也没有留下。在我们经历人生的过程中，同样的事情也会发生在我们身上。我们体内的细胞不断被替换，所以几年后，我们的身体就完全不同了。我们的想法、思想和感觉也发生了巨大的变化，但我们仍然相信我们仍然是同一个人。

There’s an old joke about a carpenter who has had the same hammer for 50 years, and it’s only had three new heads and two new shafts, which tells us something about our instinctive attitude toward identity. The philosopher Thomas Hobbes explored the ideas we have of personal identity as we change over time, using a similar story. Theseus, he said, went on a long sea voyage, and during the journey his ship needed extensive repairs. Gradually, every part of the vessel was replaced with a new part, but we still think of the ship that ended the voyage as the same ship, even though nothing of the original remained. The same thing happens to us as we go through life. Cells in our bodies are continually being replaced, so that after a few years we are physically completely different. Our ideas, thoughts, and feelings also change enormously, but we still believe we are still the same person.

硬件和软件

Hardware and software

对于像霍布斯这样的哲学家来说，问题在于，如果我们变化如此之多，那么是什么构成了我们的个人身份？我们身上是否有某个部分是不变的？与忒修斯之船不同，我们是生命体，拥有单一的生命。我们的细胞可以被替换，我们甚至可以进行器官移植，而我们仍然是同一个有机体。但如果有可能进行大脑移植，也许这意味着身份的改变——我们会将其视为大脑拥有了一个新的身体，而不是身体接受大脑作为新的“备用部件”。因此，大脑可能是我们身份的所在，但是什么使这个特定的物理器官与心脏等不同？答案似乎是，定义我们个人身份的不是大脑的“硬件”，即物理细胞，而是与“软件”有关的东西，即我们大脑内部发生的事情——我们的思想、记忆和感觉。

For philosophers like Hobbes, the problem is, if we change so much, what is it that makes up our personal identity? Is there a part of us that does not change? Unlike Theseus’s ship, we are living beings, and have a single life. Our cells can be replaced, and we can even have organ transplants and still remain the same organism. But if it were possible to have a brain transplant, maybe that would mean a change of identity—we would view it as the brain taking on a new body, rather than the body accepting the brain as a new “spare part.” So it may be that the brain is where our identity lies, but what is it that makes this particular physical organ different from, say, the heart? The answer seems to be that it is not the “hardware” of the brain, the physical cells, but something to do with the “software,” what is going on inside our brains—our thoughts, memories, and feelings—that defines our individual identities.

存在的延续

Continuity of existence

看来，我们之所以成为我们，取决于我们的思想，而不是我们的身体。然而，随着我们经历人生，我们的心理和身体都会发生变化，我们在人生的不同阶段会有不同的想法和感受。我们年轻时的想法和观点可能与我们年老时的信念完全相反。我们不仅感觉不同，而且被别人视为不同。当你遇到一个很久没见的人时，他或她的想法可能与你记忆中的人大不相同，但仍然可以辨认出是同一个人——他或她保留了相同的身份。约翰·洛克认为，就像我们作为一个物理有机体拥有单一连续的生命一样，我们的思想也具有连续的存在。个人身份涉及意识的连续性，他认为意识的连续性植根于记忆中。

It appears that what makes us who we are depends on our minds, rather than our bodies. Yet we change psychologically as well as physically as we go through life, and we think and feel differently at various stages in life. Our ideas and opinions as a young person may be totally at odds with the beliefs we will have as an older person. We not only feel differently, but are viewed as different by other people. When you meet someone you haven’t seen for a long time, he or she may have very different ideas from those of the person you remember, yet is recognizably the same—he or she has retained the same identity. John Locke suggested that just as we have a single continuous life as a physical organism, our minds also have a continuous existence. Personal identity involves continuity of consciousness, which he thought was rooted in memory.

传送器

THE TELEPORTER

在科幻小说中，传送器可以将某人从一个地方“传送”到另一个地方。但也许，这台机器实际上并没有传送这个人，而是在另一个地方制作了一个一模一样的复制品，并摧毁了原来的人。新来的人一模一样，甚至认为自己就是原来的人，但显然不是。如果原来的人没有被意外摧毁，那么两人都会认为他们有相同的身份。

In science fiction, a teleporter can “beam” someone from one place to another. Perhaps, though, the machine doesn’t actually transport the person, but makes an identical copy in another place, and destroys the original. The new person is exactly the same, and even thinks he is the original, but obviously isn’t. And if by accident the original isn’t destroyed, both would believe they have the same identity.

参见：您是否和我有同样的感受 ？

See also: Do you FEEL like I do?

计算机科学已经取得了长足的进步，如今我们拥有的机器可以通过编程来完成各种任务，而且通常比人类更高效。有些机器模仿人类大脑的活动，似乎在“思考”和做决定。尽管它们表现出某种智能，但我们大多数人本能地认为，无论技术多么先进，机器永远无法像我们一样思考。

Computer science has advanced so much that today we have machines that can be programmed to do all kinds of tasks, often more efficiently than humans. Some mimic the activity of the human brain, and appear to be “thinking” and making decisions. Although they show some kind of intelligence, most of us instinctively feel that no matter how advanced the technology, machines will never be able to think in the same way as us.

大脑是一台软机器

The brain is a soft machine

“人工智能”的概念源于 20 世纪下半叶计算机科学的发展，大约在同一时间，神经科学的进步为人们提供了对人脑运作方式的洞察。这两门科学并行发展，相互借鉴。新的成像技术揭示了我们大脑中伴随思维过程的电化学活动，计算机科学家试图制造以类似方式运行的机器。如果大脑只是一个物理对象——一个“软机器”——但能够通过内部电脉冲进行思考，也许最终可以制造出一台机器来做同样的事情。人工智能领域帮助制造了不仅仅是“数字计算器”的计算机，而且可以模仿我们的思维过程，甚至引入了“模糊逻辑”等概念，使计算机能够完成识别人脸和下棋等复杂任务。

The idea of “artificial intelligence” emerged from the development of computer science in the second half of the 20th century, at around the same time as advances in neuroscience were providing an insight into the workings of the human brain. The two sciences developed side by side, and each borrowed ideas from the other. New imaging technology revealed the electrochemical activity in our brains that accompanies our thought processes, and computer scientists attempted to make machines that operated in a similar way. If a brain is simply a physical object—a “soft machine”—but is capable of thinking through internal electrical impulses, perhaps eventually a machine could be made to do the same. The field of artificial intelligence has helped produce computers that are not simply “number crunchers,” but that mimic our thought processes, even introducing concepts such as “fuzzy logic,” so that computers are capable of such complex tasks as recognizing faces and playing chess.

图灵测试

The Turing test

在某些任务中，计算机取得的结果与人类别无二致——通常甚至更好——甚至似乎能够做出决策。它们似乎具有某种智慧，或者说具有某种思维形式。计算机科学的先驱阿兰·图灵提出了一项简单的测试，以显示机器是否真正表现出智慧。计算机和人类都被问到一系列书面问题，并给出书面答复。一位公正的评判员检查答复，如果他或她无法分辨出差异，那么计算机就表明它具有思考能力。约翰·塞尔后来质疑图灵的测试是否真的有效（见《中文房间》）。今天的计算机当然能够模仿人类的大量行为，但我们距离《银翼杀手》等科幻电影中几乎完美的人类机器人似乎还有很长的路要走。

In some tasks, these computers achieve results that are indistinguishable from those of humans—often better—and even seem to be able to make decisions. It appears that they have a kind of intelligence, or a form of thought. Alan Turing, a pioneer of computer science, suggested a simple test to show whether a machine is in fact showing intelligence. A computer and a human are both asked a series of written questions, and give written replies. An impartial judge examines the replies, and if he or she cannot tell the difference, the computer has shown it is capable of thinking. John Searle later questioned whether Turing’s test really works (see The Chinese room). Today’s computers are certainly able to mimic a great deal of human behavior, but it seems we are still a long way from the almost perfectly human androids of science-fiction films such as Blade Runner.

没有头脑的机器

Mindless machines

即使有一台理想的计算机，其行为方式与人类完全没有区别，我们许多人直觉地认为它不会真正拥有思想和感情。它可能会给人一种印象，认为它有智慧，会思考和感受，但它真的有这种内在生活吗？还是它只是在模拟精神生活？一台模拟飓风的计算机实际上并不包含飓风。那么，为什么假设一台模拟思想和感情的计算机有真正的思想和感情呢？但是，如果这种物理机器都不能拥有内在的精神生活，那么考虑到我们最终看起来是生物机器，我们又怎么能拥有这样的内在生活呢？你是由什么样的物质构成的真的很重要吗？

Even if there were an ideal computer that behaved in a way completely indistinguishable from a human, many of us intuitively feel that it would not really have thoughts and feelings. It might give the impression that it has intelligence, and that it thinks and feels, but would it really have this sort of inner life? Or would it merely be simulating mental life? A computer that simulates a hurricane does not really contain a hurricane. So why suppose a computer that simulates thoughts and feelings has real thoughts and feelings? But if no such physical machine can have an inner mental life, how is it that we are able to have such an inner life, given that we appear ultimately to be biological machines? Does it really matter what kind of stuff you are made from?

假装

计算机可能给人一种印象，认为它具有智能，并且以与我们相同的方式思考，但它可能并没有意识到这一点，因为机器没有思想。

A computer may give the impression that it has intelligence and is thinking in the same way as we do, but perhaps it is not conscious of doing so because machines do not have minds.

中国厅

THE CHINESE ROOM

约翰·塞尔设计了一个思想实验，挑战图灵测试的有效性。将一个不懂中文的人带进一个房间，房间里有英文指示，教他如何用一组中文符号回答另一组中文符号。外面的中国人可以看到用中文提出的问题，以及合理的中文答案。他们错误地认为房间里的人正在用中文进行对话。

John Searle devised a thought experiment that challenges the validity of the Turing test. A person with no knowledge of Chinese is put into a room with instructions in English of how to respond to a set of Chinese symbols with another set. Chinese people outside can see questions in Chinese going into the room and sensible Chinese answers coming out. They wrongly assume the person in the room is participating in a conversation in Chinese.

参见：你有和我一样的感受吗 ？|是什么让你成为你？

See also: Do you FEEL like I do? | What MAKES you YOU?

正如自然科学从对周围世界的哲学探究发展而来，心理学和神经科学的发展也帮助我们解答有关思维和大脑的哲学问题。但也许并非所有思维运作方式都能得到科学解释。

Just as the natural sciences evolved from philosophical inquiry into the world around us, psychology and neuroscience developed to help us answer philosophical questions about the mind and the brain. But perhaps not all the workings of our minds can be scientifically explained.

心智与行为

Mind and behavior

尽管心理学的根源在于心灵哲学所提出的问题，但它试图从一个相当不同的角度来解释我们的心灵运作方式。心理学家提出了许多基于科学观察的理论，以取代他们所认为的推测。例如，行为主义心理学家通过研究动物和人类学习事物时的行为，以及通过进行旨在测试其理论的实验来研究我们如何获取知识（哲学认识论的主要部分）。后来，认知心理学家设计了实验方法来研究大脑如何在记忆中存储信息，以及我们如何通过处理来自感官的信息来感知事物。心理学还研究了我们心灵运作的其他方面，如智力、个性和情感，以科学地解释我们如何以及为什么会这样思考和行为。

Despite its roots in the questions posed by the philosophy of mind, psychology has attempted to find explanations of the way our minds work from a rather different perspective. In place of what psychologists regarded as speculation, they have proposed a number of theories based on scientific observation. For example, behaviorist psychologists examined how we acquire knowledge (a major part of philosophical epistemology) by examining the behavior of animals and humans as they learned things, and by conducting experiments designed to test their theories. Later, cognitive psychologists devised experimental methods to examine how brains store information in memory, and how we perceive things by processing information from our senses. Psychology has also examined other aspects of the workings of our minds, such as intelligence, personality, and emotions, to give scientific explanations of how and why we think and behave the way we do.

大脑如何运作

How the brain works

与此同时，神经科学研究了大脑和神经系统的物理过程。神经科学家已经了解了来自我们感官的信息如何作为电化学信号通过我们的神经系统传输到我们的大脑和从我们的大脑传输出去，以及大脑如何处理这些信息。利用现代成像方法，他们甚至能够看到当我们处理来自感官的信息时，以及在思考、决策、记忆或使用语言等心理过程中大脑的电活动。尽管神经科学在解释我们大脑的工作原理方面已经取得了很大进展，但它只能向我们展示当我们体验某种事物时身体上发生了什么，这似乎与我们的主观意识体验不同。

Meanwhile, neuroscience has looked at the physical processes of the brain and nervous system. Neuroscientists have learned how information from our sense organs is transmitted to and from our brains as electrochemical signals via our nervous systems, and how the brain processes that information. Using modern imaging methods, they have even been able to see the electrical activity in the brain when we process information from our senses, and during mental processes such as thinking, decision making, remembering, or using language. Although neuroscience has gone a long way toward explaining the workings of our brains, it can only show us what is happening physically when we experience something, which is not, it seems, the same as our subjective conscious experience.

超出了科学的范围？

Beyond the reach of science?

神经科学为我们提供了有关大脑“硬件”（大脑和神经系统的物理运作）的知识，心理学则告诉我们很多有关“软件”（大脑处理信息的方式）的知识。这些科学开始解答一些有关我们如何感知世界以及如何获取和存储有关世界的知识的问题。但是，这些科学能否告诉我们大脑究竟是什么，或者解释我们的主观体验？为什么当大脑中发生某些事情时，我们会有那种有意识的体验？事实上，为什么这样的大脑事件会伴随着有意识的体验？科学也许能够告诉我们很多有关大脑如何运作的知识，但似乎有些有关大脑及其内部活动的问题仍然超出了科学的范围。

Neuroscience has provided us with knowledge of the “hardware” of our minds (the physical workings of the brain and nervous system), and psychology has told us much about the “software” (the way our minds process information). These sciences are beginning to answer some of the questions about how we perceive the world and acquire and store knowledge about it. But will such sciences ever be able to tell us what exactly a mind is, or explain our subjective experiences? Why do we have the kind of conscious experiences we do when certain things happen in our brains? Indeed, why should such brain events be accompanied by conscious experiences at all? Science may be able to tell us a great deal about how our minds work, but it seems there are some questions about our minds and what goes on in them that are still beyond the scope of science.

一门新科学

A NEW SCIENCE

直到 19 世纪末，心理学才作为一门科学出现。在美国大学里，心理学家来自哲学系，而在欧洲，实验心理学最初被认为是生理学的一个分支。心理学很快就成为一门独立的新学科，即心智和行为的科学——哲学和生理学之间的桥梁。

Psychology did not appear as a science until the late 19th century. In American universities, psychologists emerged from within the departments of philosophy, while in Europe, experimental psychology was at first considered a branch of physiology. Psychology soon became a new discipline in its own right, the science of mind and behavior—a bridge between philosophy and physiology.

参见：什么是意识？|计算机可以 思考吗？

See also: What is CONSCIOUSNESS? | Can COMPUTERS think?

哲学家非常重视理性的运用。当他们提出一个理论时，他们会尝试用合理的论据来支持它。他们还会寻找支持理论的论据中的逻辑缺陷。逻辑使我们能够建立合理的论据并评估论据对理论的支持程度。

Philosophers place great emphasis on the use of reason. When they propose a theory, they try to support it with a reasoned argument. They also look for logical flaws in the arguments supposedly supporting a theory. Logic allows us to build rational arguments and assess how well an argument supports a theory.

建立理性的论点

Building a rational argument

仅仅说我们相信某件事是真的，不太可能让别人相信我们的观点。我们需要通过展示我们是如何得出结论的，并提出论据来支持我们的信念。一个好的论据将展示我们如何以合乎逻辑的方式从一个想法转向另一个想法。它应该从被接受为真实的陈述（前提）开始，然后推断出结论。为了确定一个论据的结论是真的，前提必须是真的，论据在逻辑上是合理的。逻辑为我们提供了一种评估我们的推论是好是坏的方法，有些论据比其他论据更有力。

Simply saying that we believe something is true is unlikely to convince other people of our opinion. We need to back up the belief by showing how we came to that conclusion and presenting an argument to support it. A good argument will show how we moved from one idea to another in a logical way. It should start with statements that are accepted as true—the premises—and infer a conclusion. In order to establish that the conclusion of an argument is true, the premises must be true and the argument logically sound. Logic provides us with a method of assessing whether our inferences are good or bad, and some arguments are stronger than others.

了解真相

Getting at the truth

逻辑帮助我们分析论证——了解其结构或逻辑形式。然后，我们可以评估结论是否符合前提。如果我们可以从前提中推导出结论，则该论证被认为是有效的。这种论证称为演绎论证。在演绎论证中，如果前提为真，结论也必须为真。但是，能够从前提中推导出结论并不足以证明结论为真；它还取决于论证的内容。例如，我们可以从前提“所有哲学家都是人类”和“亚里士多德是哲学家”开始，然后得出结论“亚里士多德是人类”。该论证令人信服，因为它具有合理的逻辑形式，结论符合这两个前提。但是，如果我们改为说“所有哲学家都是聪明的。亚里士多德是哲学家。因此，亚里士多德是聪明的”会怎样？与第一个例子一样，这个论证有两个前提可以得出结论，但前提“所有哲学家都是聪明的”可能正确也可能不正确。我们需要一些证据或其他论证来证明其正确性。

Logic helps us to analyze an argument—to see its structure, or logical form. We can then assess whether or not the conclusion follows from the premises. An argument is said to be valid when we can deduce (work out) the conclusion from the premises. Such an argument is known as a deductive argument. In a deductive argument, if the premises are true, the conclusion must also be true. But being able to deduce the conclusion from the premises is not enough to prove that the conclusion is true; it also depends on the content of the argument. For example, we can start with the premises “All philosophers are human” and “Aristotle is a philosopher,” and move to the conclusion “Aristotle is human.” The argument is convincing because it has a sound logical form and the conclusion follows from the two premises. But what if we instead said, “All philosophers are intelligent. Aristotle is a philosopher. Therefore, Aristotle is intelligent”? Like the first example, this argument has two premises leading to a conclusion, but the premise “All philosophers are intelligent” may or may not be true. We need some evidence or another argument to establish its truth.

合理程度

Degrees of reasonableness

如果我们可以确定一个论证的前提很可能都是真的，而且我们知道这个论证是有效的，那么我们就可以知道结论很可能也是真的。但有时，论证的前提虽然是真的，但却不能给我们提供足够的信息来证明结论是否正确。例如，我知道大多数 吉他手都是右撇子，而吉姆就是吉他手，这给了我相信吉姆很可能是右撇子的理由。虽然如果前提是真的，论证是有效的，那么就可以证明某些事情是真的，但并非所有的论证都是如此黑白分明。信念的合理性有不同程度。因此，许多哲学论证只是为了为一个想法——一个理论，而不是一个证据——提供一个合理的理由。

If we can establish that the premises of an argument are very probably all true, and we know that the argument is valid, then we can know that the conclusion is most likely true, too. But sometimes the premises of an argument, although true, do not give us enough information to prove whether or not the conclusion is true. For example, I know that most guitarists are right-handed, and that Jim is a guitarist, and this gives me some justification for believing that Jim is likely to be right-handed. Although it is possible to prove that some things are true if the premises are true and the argument is valid, not all arguments are so black and white. There are degrees of reasonableness of belief. As a result, many philosophical arguments set out simply to provide a reasonable justification for an idea—a theory, rather than a proof.

罗素的茶壶

RUSSELL’S TEAPOT

有些人，尤其是那些有着坚定宗教信仰或政治信仰的人，认为他们不必证明自己的主张；他们认为应该由其他人来反驳他们。对此，伯特兰·罗素 (Bertrand Russell) 提出，太阳周围有一个茶壶，太小了，从地球上无法探测到。没有人能证明他是错的，但这并不意味着我们应该接受他的理论。

Some people, especially those with deeply held religious or political beliefs, don’t think they should have to prove their claims; they feel it is up to others to disprove them. In reply to this, Bertrand Russell proposed that there is a teapot orbiting the sun, too small to be detected from Earth. No one can prove him wrong, but this does not mean we should accept his theory.

参见：什么是逻辑论证？|有不同种类的真理吗？ , 什么构成了好的论证？

See also: What is a LOGICAL ARGUMENT? | Are there different kinds of TRUTH?, What makes a GOOD ARGUMENT?

理性论证可以有多种形式，但都是从前提到结论的循序渐进的过程。哲学家们使用越来越复杂的论证形式来提出和证明他们的观点，这些论证所依据的逻辑也变得越来越复杂，发展成为与数学相关的哲学分支。

Rational arguments can take many forms, but all move in steps from premises to a conclusion. Philosophers have used increasingly complex forms of argument to present and justify their ideas, and the logic that underpins these arguments has become more sophisticated, developing into a branch of philosophy with connections to math.

亚里士多德体系

Aristotle’s system

古希腊的第一批哲学家使用理性提出关于世界的思想，并通过与其他思想家的辩论来论证他们的信仰的合理性。到苏格拉底时代，这是一种成熟的理论表达方式。苏格拉底发展了一种称为辩证法的方法，即通过与持不同观点的人讨论观点来追求真理。他的技巧的主要部分是展示那些人信仰中固有的矛盾。但亚里士多德设计了一种以逻辑形式呈现论证的系统——三段论。他说，逻辑论证由两个前提组成，从而得出结论。论证的每一步都是一个特定形式的陈述或命题，例如“所有 X 都是 Y”、“一些 X 是 Y”、“没有 X 是 Y”或“一些 X 不是 Y”。亚里士多德随后对这些陈述的各种组合进行了分类，确定了其中哪些组合提供了好的或坏的结论。

The first philosophers in ancient Greece proposed ideas about the world by using reason, and justification for their beliefs was argued in debate with other thinkers. By the time of Socrates, this was a well-established way of presenting theories. Socrates developed a method, known as the dialectic, of pursuing truth by discussing ideas with people with differing views. A major part of his technique was to show the contradictions inherent in those people’s beliefs. But it was Aristotle who devised a system of presenting an argument in a logical form—the syllogism. Logical arguments, he said, consist of two premises leading to a conclusion. Each step of the argument is a statement, or proposition, in a particular form, such as “All X are Y,” “Some X are Y,” “No X are Y,” or “Some X are not Y.” Aristotle then classified the various combinations of these statements, identifying which of them provided good or bad conclusions.

演绎和归纳

Deduction and induction

三段论的一个著名例子是“所有人都会死。苏格拉底是人。因此，苏格拉底是人。”在这里，结论“苏格拉底是人”在逻辑上是由普遍前提“所有人都会死”与前提“苏格拉底是人”结合得出的。如果结论符合前提，则此类演绎论证有效，否则无效。但还有另一种形式的论证，称为归纳论证，其中通常从特定前提推断出一般规则。例如，我们从观察到的鱼类的特定实例中推断出所有鱼都有鳃，但这个结论可能是错误的——可能（事实上确实有）有些鱼有肺而不是鳃。在归纳论证中，结论不一定符合前提。归纳论证不应该是有效的。前提旨在支持结论，但不能从逻辑上保证结论的真实性。

A famous example of a syllogism is “All men are mortal. Socrates is a man. Therefore, Socrates is mortal.” Here, the conclusion “Socrates is mortal” is logically entailed by the universal premise “All men are mortal,” in combination with the premise “Socrates is a man.” Deductive arguments such as this one are valid if the conclusion follows from the premises, and invalid if it doesn’t. But there is another form of argument, called induction, in which a general rule is often inferred from particular premises. For example, we infer that all fish have gills from the particular instances of fish that we have observed, but that conclusion may be false—there may be (and, in fact, are) some fish that have lungs instead of gills. In an inductive argument, the conclusion does not necessarily follow from its premises. Inductive arguments are not supposed to be valid. The premises are meant to support, but not logically guarantee the truth of, their conclusions.

数理逻辑

Mathematical logic

亚里士多德将论证分析为三步论证法，这种方法直到 19 世纪末仍然是逻辑学的基础，但它作为分析论证的方法有其局限性。德国数学家戈特洛布·弗雷格彻底改变了评估哲学论证的方式。以前，人们认为逻辑源于我们的思维方式，但弗雷格证明，像数学一样，逻辑是基于一套客观规则的。他引入了一种符号系统（参见符号逻辑）来以逻辑形式呈现论证。这消除了以口头形式呈现的哲学论证的模糊性，使哲学家能够以数学家分析数学陈述的方式来分析逻辑命题。它还为逻辑提供了一个新的框架，使其成为一种更强大的工具，并为 20 世纪更具分析性的哲学形式铺平了道路。

Aristotle’s method of analyzing an argument as a three-step syllogism remained the basis for logic until the end of the 19th century, but it had its limitations as a means of analyzing arguments. German mathematician Gottlob Frege revolutionized the way that philosophical arguments could be assessed. Previously, it had been thought that logic was derived from the way we think, but Frege demonstrated that, like math, it is based on a set of objective rules. He introduced a system of notation (see Symbolic logic) to present arguments in a logical form. This ironed out the ambiguities of philosophical arguments presented verbally, allowing philosophers to analyze logical propositions in the same way that mathematicians analyze mathematical statements. It also provided a new framework for logic, making it a much more powerful tool, and paving the way for a more analytical form of philosophy in the 20th century.

符号逻辑

SYMBOLIC LOGIC

当戈特洛布·弗雷格展示逻辑与数学之间的联系时，他还提出了一种符号系统来表达逻辑陈述，使用类似于数学中使用的符号。通过这种方式，命题可以以逻辑形式呈现，并根据逻辑规则进行分析，从而可以以类似于数学证明的方式测试论证。

When Gottlob Frege showed the connection between logic and math, he also suggested a system of notation to express logical statements, using symbols similar to the signs used in math. In this way, a proposition can be presented in a logical form, and analyzed according to the rules of logic, so that the argument can be tested in a similar way to a mathematical proof.

参见：对还是错？证明一下…… |什么才是好的论点？|逻辑能告诉我们什么？

See also: True or false? PROVE IT… | What makes a GOOD ARGUMENT? | What can LOGIC tell us?

哲学论证主要涉及确定某个想法或命题的真实性。但是确定某个陈述是真是假的方法有很多种。有时，我们可以仅使用理性和逻辑来证明某件事是真的，而有时我们必须观察周围的世界。

Philosophical arguments are largely concerned with establishing the truth of an idea or proposition. But there are different ways of establishing whether a statement is true or false. Sometimes, we can use reason and logic alone to show that something is true, while at other times we must observe the world around us.

两种真理

Two types of truths

哲学家和数学家戈特弗里德·莱布尼茨认为，真理不止一种。他确定了两种不同的陈述，他认为这两种陈述以不同的方式为真。他将第一种称为“推理真理”，并解释说，这种真理仅靠推理就能得到验证。例如，“所有公猫都是雄性”这个陈述就是这样的真理，因为公猫的定义是“一只公猫”。事实上，这个例子就是哲学家所说的分析真理——它因其含义而为真。但是，“苏格拉底在隔壁房间”这样的陈述又如何呢？我们只能通过看看隔壁房间苏格拉底是否在那里才能判断这个陈述是否为真。这就是莱布尼茨所说的“事实真理”，而不是推理真理。像这样的陈述不能仅凭其含义而为真，被称为综合真理，而不是分析真理。

The philosopher and mathematician Gottfried Leibniz believed that there is more than one type of truth. He identified two different kinds of statements, which he supposed to be true in different ways. The first he called a “truth of reasoning,” and explained that it can be verified by reason alone. For example, the statement “All tomcats are male” is such a truth because the definition of tomcat is “a male cat.” In fact, this example is what philosophers call an analytic truth—it is true because of its meaning. But what about a statement such as “Socrates is in the next room”? We can only tell if this statement is true by looking in the next room to see if Socrates is there. This is what Leibniz called a “truth of fact,” rather than a truth of reasoning. Statements like this that cannot be true because of their meaning alone are known as synthetic, as opposed to analytic, truths.

不加矛盾地否定事实

Denying truths without contradiction

按照莱布尼茨的说法，推理真理不能被否定而不产生矛盾。我们不能否定“所有正方形都有四条边”这样的推理真理并断言“存在一个没有四条边的正方形”，否则就会自相矛盾。这就如同说存在一个没有四条边的四边形物体。所有正方形都有四条边这一事实也是所谓的必然真理 —— 在任何情况下和所有可能世界中都是正确的。另一方面，事实真理“亚伯拉罕·林肯是美国人”可能会被矛盾。林肯恰好出生在美国，但情况可能有所不同 —— 他可能出生在其他地方。因为它取决于某事是否实际如此，所以这样的真理被称为偶然真理。

According to Leibniz, truths of reasoning cannot be denied without contradiction. We cannot deny a truth of reasoning such as “All squares have four sides” and assert, “There is a square without four sides,” without contradicting ourselves. This would be the same as saying there is something four-sided that does not have four sides. The fact that all squares have four sides is also what is known as a necessary truth—it is true in all circumstances and in all possible worlds. On the other hand, a truth of fact such as “Abraham Lincoln was American” could be contradicted. It happens to be the case that Lincoln was born in the United States, but circumstances might have been different—he might have been born elsewhere. Because it depends on whether something actually is the case or not, such a truth is known as a contingent truth.

休谟叉

Hume’s fork

推理真理与事实真理之间的区别在休谟哲学中尤为重要。他认为陈述要么与“观念关系”有关，要么与“事实问题”有关，并将这些类别比作岔路口后的两个不同方向。休谟认为，关于观念关系的真实陈述只能通过理性来了解，并且是必然真理，但它们是微不足道的（就像正方形有四条边的陈述一样），不会给我们提供任何关于世界的知识。另一方面，关于事实问题的真实陈述确实可以为我们提供有关世界的信息——但我们需要观察世界才能知道它们是否真实。休谟认为，我们无法从一个岔路口跨越到另一个岔路口——我们无法仅依靠理性来获得关于真实事实的知识。

The distinction between truths of reasoning and truths of fact is particularly important in the philosophy of David Hume. He regarded statements as concerning either “relations of ideas” or “matters of fact,” and likened these categories to two different directions after a fork in a road. Hume argued that true statements about relations of ideas can be known by reason alone, and will be necessary truths, but that they are trivial (like the statement that squares have four sides) and give us no knowledge about the world. True statements concerning matters of fact, on the other hand, really can provide us with information about the world—but we need to observe the world to find out if they are true. Hume thought that we cannot cross from one fork of the road to the other—we can’t gain knowledge of real matters of fact by relying on reason alone.

数学和科学

MATH AND SCIENCE

必然真理与偶然真理之间的区别反映了数学与自然科学之间的根本区别。数学真理似乎仅凭理性就能知晓——它们是必然真理。然而，科学发现，例如水在 1 个大气压下沸腾至 212ºF (100ºC) 的事实，是偶然真理——它们依赖于观察，而且与数学真理不同，它们并非不容置疑。

The difference between necessary and contingent truths reflects the fundamental difference between math and the natural sciences. Mathematical truths appear to be knowable by reason alone—they are necessary truths. However, scientific discoveries, such as the fact that water boils at 212ºF (100ºC) at 1 atmosphere, are contingent truths—they rely on observation, and, unlike mathematical truths, are not indisputable.

参见：我们能相信科学告诉我们的 吗？

See also: Can we TRUST what SCIENCE tells us?

为了具有说服力（合乎逻辑且令人信服），论证必须基于真实或至少合理的前提，并为结论提供支持。论证可以用几种不同的方式呈现，其逻辑形式决定了从前提推断结论是否正确。

To be cogent (logical and convincing), an argument must be based on premises that are true, or at least reasonable, and provide support for the conclusion. An argument can be presented in several different ways, and the logical form it takes determines whether it is right to infer the conclusion from the premises.

分析论点

Analyzing an argument

几个世纪以来，分析论证的主要方法都是基于亚里士多德的三段论模型。根据该模型，论证由两个前提和一个结论组成，要构成一个好的论证，它必须满足某些标准。论证中的每个陈述都由两个术语组成，这些术语可能是通用的（例如“所有 X 都是 Y”或“没有 X 是 Y”）或特定的（例如“一些 X 是 Y”或“一些 X 不是 Y”）。这些类型的陈述的各种组合总共可能产生 256 种不同的三段论形式，这些形式根据结论是否可以从前提推断出来进行分类。只有某些形式是有效的演绎论证，其中特定结论来自通用前提，如果前提为真，结论也必须为真。其他形式包括推理错误的例子，称为谬误，或归纳论证的例子，其中前提支持结论，但在逻辑上不能保证结论的真实性。

For centuries, the principal method of analyzing an argument was based on Aristotle’s model of the syllogism. According to this, an argument consists of two premises and a conclusion, and to constitute a good argument, it had to satisfy certain criteria. Each statement within the argument is made up of two terms, which may be universal (such as “all X are Y” or “no X are Y”) or particular (such as “some X are Y” or “some X are not Y”). Various combinations of these types of statements give, in total, a possible 256 different forms of syllogisms, and these have been classified according to whether or not the conclusion can be inferred from the premises. Only some forms are valid deductive arguments, in which a particular conclusion follows from a universal premise, and if the premises are true, the conclusion must also be true. Other forms include examples of errors of reasoning, which are known as fallacies, or examples of arguments such as induction, in which the premises support, but do not logically guarantee the truth of, the conclusion.

半真半假的问题

The problem of half-truths

然而，基于亚里士多德论证分析的逻辑也有其缺点。虽然它可以很容易地表明演绎论证是否有效，但它并不是一个评估既无法证明也无法反驳的结论强度的适当系统。戈特洛布·弗雷格在 19 世纪引入的数理逻辑有助于提供一个更复杂的模型来确定逻辑论证的强度。然而，问题仍然存在，即论证依赖于某事是真还是假的想法，而事实上存在“半真”之类的事情。最近，已经建立了一个“模糊逻辑”系统，以给出真（给定值为 1）和假（给定值为 0）之间的连续体，因此半真的东西可以用 0.5 的值来表示，相当可能的概率可以用 0.9 来表示，极小的可能性可以用 0.1 来表示。

Logic based on Aristotle’s analysis of arguments had its shortcomings, however. While it quite easily showed whether a deductive argument was valid or not, it was not an adequate system for assessing the strength of a conclusion that could be neither proved nor disproved. The mathematical logic introduced by Gottlob Frege in the 19th century helped provide a more sophisticated model for determining the strength of logical arguments. Yet the problem remained that arguments depended on the idea that something is either true or false, when in fact there are such things as “half-truths.” Recently, a system of “fuzzy logic” has been established to give a continuum between true (given a value of 1) and false (given a value of 0), so that something that is a half-truth could be expressed by a value of 0.5, a pretty likely probability by 0.9, and a remote possibility by 0.1.

令人费解的悖论

Puzzling paradoxes

即使是一个看似合理的论证，基于看似正确的前提，也可能导致明显错误或矛盾的结论——即悖论。通常很难看出这是由于推理错误，还是由于前提错误、模棱两可甚至相互矛盾。最著名的悖论之一是由埃利亚的芝诺提出的，他提出了一个令人信服的论点：如果阿喀琉斯在赛跑中让乌龟领先，他就永远追不上它（见下图）。使用传统逻辑工具，哲学家们发现很难挑出他的推理错误。这就是悖论的问题所在——它们在逻辑上看似合理，但却导致荒谬的结论。即使是复杂的现代数学技术也未能为芝诺难题提供简单的解决方案。

Even a seemingly sound argument, based on apparently true premises, can lead to a conclusion that is obviously wrong or contradictory—a paradox. It is often difficult to see if this is due simply to faulty reasoning, or to false, ambiguous, or even contradictory premises. One of the most famous paradoxes was devised by Zeno of Elea, who presents a compelling argument that Achilles can never catch up with a tortoise if he gives it a head start in a race (see illustration below). Using the tools of traditional logic, philosophers found it difficult to fault his reasoning. And that’s the trouble with paradoxes—they are apparently logically sound, but lead to absurd conclusions. Even sophisticated modern mathematical techniques haven’t yet come up with a simple solution to Zeno’s puzzle.

阿喀琉斯与乌龟

在芝诺悖论中，阿喀琉斯永远无法成功追上乌龟，因为当他到达乌龟当前的位置时，乌龟已经走了。

In Zeno of Elea’s paradox, Achilles will never succeed in overtaking the tortoise because by the time he reaches the tortoise’s current position, the tortoise will already have moved on.

这不可能是真的！

IT CAN’T BE TRUE!

克里特岛的埃庇米尼得斯因提出“所有克里特人都是骗子”这一著名悖论而受到赞誉。在说出这句话时，他承认自己没有说实话。这句话本身很简单，但因为它自相矛盾，它把我们带回到开头：如果它是真的，那么他就是在撒谎，但如果他在撒谎，那它就不可能是真的。

Epimenides of Crete is credited with producing the famous paradox “All Cretans are liars.” In saying this, he admits that he himself doesn’t tell the truth. The statement itself is simple enough, but because it is self-contradictory, it leads us back to the beginning: If it’s true, then he’s lying, but if he’s lying, it can’t be true.

参见：对还是错？证明一下…… |什么是逻辑论证？|我们能相信科学告诉我们的 东西吗？

See also: True or false? PROVE IT… | What is a LOGICAL ARGUMENT? | Can we TRUST what SCIENCE tells us?

自然科学以观察和实验为基础，而数学则以逻辑推理为基础。但在试图理解他们观察到的事物时，科学家已经开发出检查这些事物的方法，并以合乎逻辑的方式提供证据来证明他们的理论。

The natural sciences are based on observation and experiment, unlike math, which is based on logical reasoning. But in trying to understand the things they observe, scientists have developed methods of examining them and presenting the evidence to justify their theories in a logical fashion.

寻找规则

Looking for rules

亚里士多德通常被认为是科学方法的创始人，他工作的每个方面都是系统化的。除了是第一个分析和分类逻辑论证并有条不紊地组织其哲学方面的人之外，他还是一位热情的博物学家，并同样有条不紊地安排他对自然界的观察。他的目标是对所有生物进行分类，并以合乎逻辑的方式完成这项任务，根据植物和动物的特征将它们归类。例如，他观察到他所见过的所有鱼都有鳞片，并得出结论，这一特征将鱼与其他海洋动物区分开来。通过这种方式，他从观察中建立了一套普遍规则。

Often considered the originator of the scientific approach, Aristotle was systematic in every aspect of his work. In addition to being the first to analyze and classify logical arguments, and methodically organize aspects of his philosophy, he was an enthusiastic naturalist, and arranged his observations of the natural world just as methodically. He aimed to classify all living things, and approached the task in a logical way, grouping together plants and animals according to their characteristics. He observed, for example, that all the fish he had seen had scales, and concluded that this characteristic distinguished fish from other marine animals. In this way, he built up a set of general rules from his observations.

科学方法

A scientific method

亚里士多德的方法很简单，但它确立了观察然后分析这些观察所得数据的原则。然后可以将其用作支持某个想法或假设的证据。后来，伊斯兰科学家和哲学家采用了这一原则，他们不仅观察自然界中发生的事情，还进行实验。这反过来又导致了英国哲学家弗朗西斯·培根提出的一种更系统的方法——一种真正的科学方法。培根的方法遵循一系列合乎逻辑的步骤：观察、形成一个假设来解释某种现象，以及通过旨在产生预期结果的实验​​来检验该假设。在这种科学方法中，与其他形式的探究不同，研究人员不会简单地从观察到的现象实例中推断出一般规则。相反，他们利用这些观察结果来预测在类似情况下会发生同样的事情——假设。然后，他们通过在实验中重现情况来查看情况是否属实。这些实验的结果要么支持理论，要么反驳理论。

Aristotle’s method was simple, but it established the principle of observing and then analyzing the data resulting from those observations. This could then be used as evidence to support an idea, or hypothesis. This principle was later adopted by Islamic scientists and philosophers, who not only observed things as they occurred in the natural world, but also in experiments. This, in turn, led to a more systematic approach—a truly scientific method—proposed by English philosopher Francis Bacon. Bacon’s method follows a logical sequence of steps: observation, forming a hypothesis to explain a certain phenomenon, and testing that hypothesis with experiments designed to produce the expected results. In this scientific method, unlike other forms of inquiry, investigators don’t simply infer a general rule from observed instances of a phenomenon. Instead, they use these observations to predict that the same thing will happen in similar circumstances—the hypothesis. They then see if this is actually the case by reproducing the circumstances in experiments. It is the results of these experiments that either support or disprove a theory.

测试结果

Testing results

和亚里士多德观察特定实例并推断一般规则的方法一样，科学方法是一种归纳推理。因此，它无法证明理论是正确的。但是观察到的实例越多，理论的证据就越有力，而批判性实验的过程则提供了更强的证据。可以通过进行另一个实验来测试一个实验的结果，以查看这些结果是否重复。并且，为了确保结果尽可能可靠和客观，人们设计了复杂的实验、测量和数据分析技术。例如，在医学中，可以通过将一种治疗方法同时给予许多患者来测试治疗方法，同时给对照组提供安慰剂（一种没有治疗作用的物质）或根本不进行治疗。然后比较每组的结果，并可以用统计方法衡量治疗的有效性。这样，逻辑和数学都在科学方法中发挥着重要作用。

Like Aristotle’s method of observing particular instances and inferring a general rule, the scientific method is a form of inductive reasoning. As such, it cannot prove that a theory is true. But the more instances that are observed, the stronger the evidence is for a theory, and the process of critical experimentation offers even stronger evidence. The results of one experiment can be tested by conducting another experiment to see if those results are replicated. And, to ensure that the results are as reliable and objective as possible, sophisticated techniques of experimentation, measurement, and analysis of data have been devised. For example, in medicine, a treatment may be tested by giving it to a number of patients at the same time as control groups are given either a placebo (a substance with no therapeutic effect) or no treatment at all. The results from each group are then compared, and the effectiveness of the treatment can be measured statistically. In this way, both logic and math play an important role in the scientific method.

聪明的电脑

CLEVER COMPUTERS

第一批计算机用简单的数学规则编程，完成基本的算术任务。为了让它们完成更复杂的事情，必须将这些任务转换成一系列合乎逻辑的步骤，每个步骤都采用计算机可以“理解”的逻辑形式。新形式的数学逻辑对于将计算机从简单的计算设备转变为能够显示人工智能的机器至关重要。

The first computers did basic arithmetical tasks, programmed with simple mathematical rules. To get them to do more complex things, it is necessary to convert those tasks into a logical progression of steps, each one in a logical form that the computer can “understand.” New forms of mathematical logic were crucial in transforming computers from simple calculating devices into machines capable of showing artificial intelligence.

参见：什么是逻辑论证？|我们能相信科学告诉我们的东西吗？

See also: What is a LOGICAL ARGUMENT? | Can we TRUST what SCIENCE tells us?

我们生活在一个由科学产品主导的世界，从计算机到转基因作物。科学在解释宇宙如何运转方面也取得了很大进展。我们倾向于接受这些解释为真理，但一些哲学家认为，我们没有逻辑基础去相信它们。

We live in a world dominated by the products of science, from computers to genetically modified crops. Science has also gone a long way toward explaining how the universe works. We tend to accept these explanations as true, but some philosophers have argued that we have no logical basis for believing them.

归纳问题

The problem of induction

科学理论只能基于现有的证据，因此，对特定事例的观察可用于支持关于未来或宇宙中任何地方可能发生的一般结论。这是归纳推理，科学家依靠它试图告诉我们一些有关世界的事情。例如，我可能会得出结论，当我放开一个球时，它会掉到地上，因为每次我放下一个球时，它都会掉下来；或者推断，因为我每天早上都看到太阳升起，所以明天和以后的每一天它都会再次升起。但我有什么理由相信这一点？大卫休谟认为，我们对归纳推理的依赖是完全没有道理的。我们没有理由假设明天太阳会升起，就像我们没有理由假设它不会升起一样。他解释说，归纳推理的问题在于，它依赖于宇宙中一切都遵循不变的模式，未来将与过去相似这样的假设。但这个假设本身是基于归纳推理的——我们假设自然是统一的，因为我们有限的经验告诉我们它是如此。同样，仅仅因为在我们的经验中一个事件总是紧随另一个事件发生，并不意味着第一个事件导致了第二个事件。如果两个时钟相隔几秒钟，一个总是在另一个之后响起，但这并不是因为这个。休谟说，科学是一种习俗和习惯，而不是推理——我们不得不相信这些东西。认为太阳明天升起的可能性和不升起的可能性一样大，这似乎很荒谬，但哲学家们一直在努力挑出休谟论点的毛病。

Scientific theories can only be based on the evidence available, so observations of particular instances are used to support general conclusions about what might happen in the future or everywhere in the universe. This is inductive reasoning, which scientists rely on in trying to tell us something about the world. For example, I might conclude that when I let go of a ball, it will fall to the ground because every time I have dropped a ball, it has fallen, or infer that since I have seen the sun rise every morning, it will do so again tomorrow and every day afterward. But what grounds do I have for believing this? David Hume argued that our dependence on inductive reasoning is wholly unjustified. We have no more reason to suppose the sun will rise tomorrow than we have to suppose it will not. The problem of induction, he explained, is that it relies on the assumption that everything in the universe follows an unchanging pattern, and that the future will resemble the past. But this assumption is itself based on inductive reasoning—we assume that nature is uniform because our limited experience tells us that it is so. Similarly, just because in our experience one event has invariably followed another, does not mean that the first event caused the second. If two clocks are set a few seconds apart, one always chimes after the other, but not because of it. Science, Hume said, is a matter of custom and habit, not reasoning—we cannot help but believe these things. It may seem ridiculous to suggest that the sun is just as likely not to rise tomorrow as it is to rise, but philosophers have struggled to find fault with Hume’s argument.

不是所有的猫都有尾巴

Not all cats have tails

归纳推理问题使人们对我们能相信科学理论的程度产生了怀疑，这个问题一直未得到解决，直到 20 世纪中叶卡尔·波普尔提出了一种不同的方法。波普尔同意几个观察到的实例不能证实一般原则，但他指出，一个反面例子就可以证伪该理论。无论我见过多少次有尾巴的猫，我都不能确定“所有猫都有尾巴”这一理论的真实性——但只要见过一次没有尾巴的猫，就表明它是错误的。根据波普尔的说法，理论只有可证伪（能够通过观察或实验证明是错误的）才是科学的。

The problem of induction called into doubt how much we can trust scientific theories, and remained unresolved until Karl Popper suggested a different approach in the mid-20th century. Popper agreed that several observed instances can’t confirm a general principle, but pointed out that a single negative instance can falsify that theory. No matter how many positive sightings I make of cats with tails, I cannot be certain of the truth of the theory “All cats have tails”—but just one sighting of a cat with no tail shows it is false. According to Popper, theories are scientific only if they are falsifiable (capable of being shown to be false by observation or experiment).

可疑的逻辑

“所有天鹅都是白色的”这一结论在逻辑上都不能保证是正确的，无论你看到多少只白天鹅，但只要看到一只黑天鹅就可以证明它是错误的。

The conclusion “All swans are white” isn’t logically guaranteed to be true, no matter how many white swans you see, but a single sighting of a black swan establishes it as false.

但诱导有效！

But induction works!

我们能否通过证明归纳推理有效来证明信任归纳推理是合理的？毕竟，科学家们依靠归纳论证将人类送上了月球。这些科学上的胜利难道不表明我们有理由相信这些论证吗？不幸的是，这个论证本身就是一个归纳论证。它说归纳推理到目前为止是有效的，所以明天它很可能也会有效。

Can we show that it is reasonable to trust inductive reasoning by showing that it works? After all, scientists have sent people to the moon by relying on inductive arguments. Don’t such scientific triumphs show that we are justified in trusting these arguments? Unfortunately, this argument is itself an inductive argument. It says that induction has worked up to now, so it will probably work tomorrow.

赌徒谬误

THE GAMBLER’S FALLACY

如果你抛出一枚完美的硬币，它有 50% 的概率会正面朝上。这意味着如果抛 100 次，有 50 次是正面朝上的概率。但是，人们很容易陷入这样的陷阱：如果硬币连续 99 次都是反面朝上，那么下次正面朝上的可能性就会大大增加。这是一个谬论，因为每次抛硬币正面朝上的概率仍然是 50% 。

If you toss a perfect coin, there’s a 50-50 chance that it will come up heads. This means that if it is tossed 100 times, the chances are that it will be heads 50 times. But it is easy to fall into the trap of believing that if the coin has come up tails 99 times in a row, it’s much more likely to be heads next time. This is a fallacy, since the probability of it coming up heads remains 50-50 with each toss.

参见：不要认为任何事都是理所当然的|什么是逻辑论证？|逻辑和科学有什么关系？

See also: Take NOTHING for granted | What is a LOGICAL ARGUMENT? | What’s LOGIC got to do with science?

逻辑往往显得非常抽象，与我们生活的世界几乎没有联系。我们无法用逻辑来确定科学理论是否正确，即使是合理的逻辑论证也会导致违背常识的悖论。所以，在证明我们的信念时，常识和逻辑或许都有一席之地。

Logic often seems very abstract, with little connection to the world we live in. We can’t use it to determine if scientific theories are true, and even sound logical arguments can lead to paradoxes that defy common sense. So Perhaps there is a place for common sense, as well as logic, in justifying our beliefs.

常识和直觉

Common sense and intuition

在某种程度上，逻辑可以被视为高度组织化的“常识”。我们在没有经过有意识分析的情况下做出的许多推论与逻辑论证的推论相同，而且我们经常无需参考逻辑规则就能识别出结论是否符合陈述。然而，有时我们的常识会让我们失望。例如，对于许多早期天文学家来说，常识似乎决定了地球是平的，太阳在地球上空移动。而且，有时，看似常识的东西只不过是一种直觉，无法为信念提供充分的理由。但是，虽然好的论证需要以逻辑为基础，但常识和直觉也发挥了作用。例如，在悖论的情况下（当看似合理的前提或陈述导致荒谬的结论时），我们直觉地感觉到有些事情是错误的。常识还告诉我们推理是错误的，因此我们可以用逻辑来更仔细地检查论证。

To some extent, logic can be regarded as “common sense” in a highly organized form. Many of the inferences that we make without consciously analyzing them are the same as those of a logical argument, and we often recognize when a conclusion does or does not follow from a statement, without referring to the rules of logic. Sometimes, however, our common sense can let us down. For many early astronomers, for example, common sense seemed to dictate that the earth was flat and that the sun moved across the earth’s sky. And, at times, what seems to be common sense is no more than a gut feeling, or intuition, which is a poor justification for a belief. But while a good argument needs to be based on logic, common sense and intuition also play a part. In the case of paradoxes (when apparently sound premises or statements lead to an absurd conclusion), for instance, we intuitively feel that something is wrong. Common sense also tells us that the reasoning is faulty, so we can then use logic to examine the argument more carefully.

简单就是最好

Simple is best

奥卡姆的威廉是一位中世纪僧侣和哲学家，他主张在相互竞争的解释和论据之间做出决定时，要运用一种特殊的常识。他认为，哲学家们经常基于多个前提提出详尽的解释来证明他们的理论。他说，当我们面对某件事的多个解释时，如果其他条件相同，那么更简单的解释更有可能是正确的。这一原则被称为奥卡姆剃刀，因为它“削去”了所有不必要的假设。大卫休谟在批评勒内笛卡尔和理性主义哲学家时也采用了类似的方法，他质问为什么必须提出非物质世界的存在来证明他们的理论。

William of Ockham, a medieval monk and philosopher, advocated a particular kind of common sense when deciding between competing explanations and arguments. Too often, he felt, philosophers produced elaborate explanations, based on multiple premises, to justify their theories. He said that when we are faced with more than one explanation for something, all things being equal, the simpler explanation is more likely to be correct. This principle is known as Ockham’s (or Occam’s) razor, as it “shaves off” all unnecessary assumptions. David Hume adopted a similar approach in his criticism of René Descartes and the rationalist philosophers, asking why it was necessary to propose the existence of an immaterial world to justify their theories.

奥卡姆剃刀

奥卡姆的威廉认为哲学家们倾向于把事情复杂化。他认为，当提供多个同等重要的解释时，最简单的解释可能是最有效的。

William of Ockham felt that philosophers tended to overcomplicate things. He argued that when multiple explanations of equal weight are offered, the simplest explanation is likely to be the most valid.

让习俗成为指导

Let custom be the guide

相反，休谟和其他经验主义哲学家试图通过用周围世界的证据证明他们的观点，将他们的哲学置于与科学同等的地位。在证明了科学的归纳推理没有逻辑依据之后，休谟解释说，我们自然会使用习俗——或者用他的话来说，是“心理习惯”——作为指导。他认为，科学信仰是无法证明的，但我们禁不住会根据过去的经验对未来做出结论。在这里，常识再次发挥了作用。如果发生的事情似乎违背了一般规则，即我们从经验中推断出的自然或物理“定律”，并被报道为奇迹，我们的常识——同样来自经验——会告诉我们，这不太可能是真的。与我们所有经验相矛盾的事件是奇迹的可能性小于我们的感觉被欺骗或事件报道是虚假的可能性。

Instead, Hume and the other empiricist philosophers aimed to put their philosophy on the same footing as the sciences, by justifying their ideas with evidence from the world around them. And, having shown that there is no logical justification for the inductive reasoning of science, Hume explained that we naturally use custom—or, as he put it, “mental habit”—as a guide. Scientific beliefs cannot be justified, he thought, but we can’t help drawing conclusions about the future based on past experience. Here again, common sense has a role. If something happens that appears to defy the general rules, the “laws” of nature or physics we have inferred from our experience, and is reported to be a miracle, our common sense—which is also derived from experience—tells us that it is unlikely to be true. The likelihood that an event contradicting all our experience is miraculous is less than the likelihood that our senses have been deceived, or that reports of the event are false.

激情的奴隶

SLAVE OF THE PASSIONS

虽然大卫·休谟主张以经验为基础进行推理，但他也意识到，我们的判断和决定往往更多地基于感觉，而不是理性思考。我们更有可能用我们的智力来证明我们的情感和本能告诉我们的东西，或者，正如他所说：“理性是激情的奴隶。”

While David Hume advocated basing our reasoning on experience, he also realized that our judgments and decisions tend to be based more on our feelings than on rational thinking. We are more likely to use our intellect to justify what our emotions and instinctive drives are telling us, or, as he put it: “Reason is the slave of the passions.”

参见：不要认为任何事都是理所当然的|什么才是好的论点？|逻辑和科学有什么关系？|我们能相信科学告诉我们的东西吗？

See also: Take NOTHING for granted | What makes a GOOD ARGUMENT? | What’s LOGIC got to do with science? | Can we TRUST what SCIENCE tells us?

我们在评估论证时面临的一个问题是，这些论证通常以一种非常粗略的方式呈现。论证究竟是什么，我们往往不清楚。有时，我们需要仔细分析，才能评估论证的逻辑是否合理，前提是否正确。

One of the problems we face when trying to evaluate arguments is that they are normally presented in a very rough way. It is often not clear exactly what the argument is. Sometimes, before we can assess whether or not an argument’s logic is sound and its premises are true, we need to analyze it carefully.

普通语言

Ordinary language

哲学家（以及政治家、律师和科学家）使用论证来试图证明他们的解释。我们可以使用逻辑来评估这些论证的力度。但是，我们说话和写作的方式并不总是能使我们的论证清晰明了。在哲学中，将某人所说的话“翻译”成更清晰的逻辑形式通常很有帮助。确定论证的各个前提及其与结论的关系可以更容易地评估论证的真正好坏。有时，即使是看起来很简单的陈述也需要详细分析才能确定其确切含义。伯特兰·罗素认为，哲学家仔细揭示日常语言中所说内容的底层“逻辑形式”非常重要。要确定陈述的真实性，我们必须首先知道它的含义。

Philosophers (as well as politicians, lawyers, and scientists) use arguments to try to justify their explanations. We can use logic to assess the strength of those arguments. However, we do not always speak and write in a way that makes our arguments clear. Often, it helps in philosophy to “translate” what someone is saying into a clearer logical form. Identifying the various premises of an argument and how they relate to its conclusion makes it easier to assess how good the argument really is. Sometimes, even statements that look simple require detailed analysis to determine exactly what they mean. Bertrand Russell believed it was important that philosophers carefully reveal the underlying “logical form” of what is said in ordinary language. To establish the truth of a statement, we must first know its meaning.

逻辑分析

Logical analysis

罗素最著名的也许是他的“描述理论”。描述是“某某”形式的短语，例如“英国女王”或“地球”，它指的是特定的人或事物（就像名字一样）。我们使用描述来表达关于该人或事物的真或假，例如“英国女王住在宫殿里”。问题是，有些短语看起来好像是指特定的人或事物，但实际上却不指任何东西。例如，“法国国王是秃头”这句话似乎对某事“法国国王”提出了一个单一的主张，即他是秃头。但法国没有国王，所以这个短语没有指任何人——它不是一个描述（描述的定义是指代某物的短语）。罗素说，让这些短语有意义的关键在于理解这个句子不是提出一个单一的主张，而是包含三个不同的主张。要找到这个句子的真正逻辑形式（然后判断它是真还是假），我们必须首先将其分解：（1）至少有一位法国国王，（2）最多有一位法国国王，（3）如果有这样的国王，那么他就是秃头。现在，这个句子是有意义的，但如果没有法国国王，那么它就是假的。罗素的分析解决了如何有意义地使用非指称短语来提出真或假主张的问题。但哲学家们对他是否正确存在分歧。

Russell is perhaps best known for his “theory of descriptions.” A description is a phrase of the form “the so-and-so”—such as “the queen of England” or “the planet Earth”—which refers to a particular person or thing (just as names do). We use a description to say something true or false about that person or thing—for example, “The queen of England lives in a palace.” The trouble is that some phrases look as though they refer to particular people or things, but in fact don’t refer to anything. For instance, the sentence “The king of France is bald” appears to make a single claim about something, “the King of France”—namely, that he is bald. But France doesn’t have a king, so this phrase refers to no one—it fails as a description (the definition of a description being a phrase that refers to something). Russell said that the key to making such phrases meaningful was understanding that rather than making a single claim, the sentence contains three distinct claims. To find the sentence’s true logical form (and then assess if it is true or false), we must first break it down: (1) there is at least one king of France, and (2) at most one king of France, and (3) if there is such a king, then he is bald. Now, the sentence is meaningful, but false if there is no king of France. Russell’s analysis solves the problem of how nonreferring phrases can be used meaningfully to make true or false claims. But philosophers disagree over whether or not he was right.

语言的逻辑

在我们确定“坚固的金山在西藏”这一说法是否正确之前，必须首先将其分解为逻辑形式，以确保我们理解其含义。

Before we can find out whether the statement “The solid gold mountain is in Tibet” is true or not, it must first be broken down into a logical form to ensure that we understand its meaning.

没人看见

Seeing nobody

其他表达方式，例如nobody和everything，也未能指称。哲学家们称之为量词。以刘易斯·卡罗尔（他也是一位逻辑学家，他的作品让罗素着迷）的《爱丽丝镜中奇遇记》中的这段引文为例：“‘我在路上看不到任何人，’爱丽丝说。‘我只希望我有这样的眼睛，’国王焦躁地说。‘能够看到任何人！’”在这里，国王将nobody当作指代某人，但这并不是它的用法。“Frank ran”和“Nobody ran”是看起来很相似的句子，但nobody不像Frank那样是一个名字 。实际上，爱丽丝想说的是她在路上能看到的人是零。

Other expressions, such as nobody and everything, also fail to refer. Philosophers call these quantifiers. Take this quotation from Through the Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll (who was also a logician and whose work fascinated Russell): “‘I see nobody on the road,’ said Alice. ‘I only wish I had such eyes,’ the King remarked in a fretful tone. ‘To be able to see Nobody!’” Here, the King treats nobody as if it refers to someone, but that’s not how it is used. “Frank ran” and “Nobody ran” are sentences that look similar, but nobody is not a name in the way Frank is. Really, what Alice is saying is that the number of people she can see on the road is zero.

逻辑和

LOGICAL SUMS

1910 年至 1913 年间，伯特兰·罗素和他的前任老师阿尔弗雷德·诺斯·怀特黑德出版了一本三卷本的逻辑学著作《数学原理》。在书中，他们试图表明算术是从逻辑的基本原理中推导出来的，而数学实际上只是逻辑的一个分支。

Between 1910 and 1913, Bertrand Russell and his former teacher Alfred North Whitehead published a three-volume book on logic, Principia Mathematica. In it, they set out to show that arithmetic is derived from the basic principles of logic, and that math is, in fact, simply a branch of logic.

参见：对还是错？证明一下…… |什么是逻辑论证？

See also: True or false? PROVE IT… | What is a LOGICAL ARGUMENT?

哲学家们提出了许多关于宇宙和我们在其中的位置的理论，并使用逻辑论证来支持它们。但是，尽管我们有语言来描述物理事物，但语言可能不足以讨论其他事物，例如宗教信仰或有关道德和伦理的主张。

Philosophers have presented numerous theories about the universe and our place in it, and used logical arguments to back them up. But although we have language to describe physical things, language can be inadequate to discuss other things, such as religious beliefs, or claims about morality and ethics.

描绘世界

Picturing the world

正如之前许多哲学家所做的那样，路德维希·维特根斯坦 (Ludwig Wittgenstein) 着手研究我们对世界的理解是否存在极限。他采取的方法是研究我们使用语言表达对世界的想法的方式。他表示，在尝试理解和解释世界时，我们用语言来描述世界。语言让我们能够“描绘”世界。世界有一个结构，我们用来表示它的语言也有同样的结构。我们可以使用名称（例如狗）来标记现实元素。这为我们提供了语言的构成要素。然后，我们可以用不同的方式组合这些名称，以产生关于世界的不同命题或“描绘”——例如“狗在叫”。命题的真假取决于世界是否像我们“描绘”的那样（如果狗在叫，我们的命题就是真的，如果不是，则是假的）。

As several philosophers had done before, Ludwig Wittgenstein set out to see if there are limits to our understanding of the world. The approach he took was to examine the way in which we use language to articulate our thoughts about the world. In trying to understand and explain the world, he said, we describe it using language. Language allows us to “picture” the world. The world has a structure, and the language we use to represent it has the same structure. We can use names, such as dog, to label elements of reality. This gives us the building blocks of language. We can then combine these names in different ways to produce different propositions about, or “pictures” of, the world—for example, “The dog is barking”. The propositions will be true or false depending on whether or not the world is as we have “pictured” it (our proposition will be true if the dog is barking, and false if it is not).

语言的构成要素

根据路德维希·维特根斯坦的早期哲学，我们用语言“描绘”世界。我们提出关于世界的真或假的命题，因此语言的结构反映了世界的结构。

According to Ludwig Wittgenstein’s early philosophy, we “picture” the world using language. We make propositions that say true or false things about the world, so the structure of language reflects the structure of the world.

语言的局限性

The limits of language

然而，语言要有意义，命题必须由标记我们所经历的世界元素的名称组成。维特根斯坦认为，有意义的语言仅限于这样的命题。他认为，有关伦理、道德、形而上学和宗教的主张不是有意义的命题。它们没有“描绘”任何东西，因此无法断言任何东西。然而，他认为它们仍然能够向我们展示一些东西，包括无法用语言表达的“神秘”事物。

For language to have any meaning, though, the propositions must be made up of names that label elements of the world that we have experienced. Wittgenstein argued that meaningful language is restricted to such propositions. He believed that claims concerning ethics, morality, metaphysics, and religion are not meaningful propositions. They do not “picture” anything, and so do not succeed in asserting anything. However, he thought that they were still capable of showing us something, including “mystical” things that cannot be put into words.

私人和公共语言

Private and public language

维特根斯坦后来改变了对语言的看法。他意识到语言实际上有各种各样的用途，而不仅仅是对世界做出陈述。这导致他发展了一种非常不同的哲学，强调语言就像一个工具箱：它包含各种各样的表达方式，以各种不同的方式使用。但维特根斯坦后期哲学中最著名的论点可能是他的“私人语言论证”。他断言，我们无法有意义地给私人或主观的体验（例如感受到疼痛的感觉）贴上标签，因为我们无法检查我们是否正确地应用了标签。因此，这种私人语言毫无意义。维特根斯坦认为还必须有一种“公共语言”，其中单词的意义来自我们使用它们的方式。一个词或陈述并不意味着一个特定的东西；它的意义取决于使用它的上下文。在他看来，所有哲学问题都源于语言混乱，而语言混乱是由语言的实际使用方式造成的。他认为，我们不需要解决此类问题；我们需要的是知道这些问题从来就不存在。

Wittgenstein later changed his mind about language. He realized that language is, in fact, used in a great variety of ways, and not just to make claims about the world. This led him to develop a very different philosophy that emphasized the idea that language is like a toolbox: It contains a wide range of expressions that are used in all kinds of different ways. But perhaps the best-known argument from Wittgenstein’s later philosophy is his “private language argument.” He asserted that we cannot meaningfully attach labels to experiences that are private, or subjective (such as feeling the sensation of pain), because we would have no way of checking if we were applying the label correctly. Therefore, this private language would be meaningless. Wittgenstein thought that there must also be a “public language,” in which words acquire their meaning from the way we use them. A word or statement does not mean a specific thing; its meaning depends on the context in which it is used. In his view, all philosophical problems result from linguistic confusion, caused by how language is actually used. He argued that we don’t need solutions to such problems; we need to be shown that there never was a problem in the first place.

盒子里的甲虫

BEETLE IN A BOX

为了阐明私人语言和公共语言的概念，维特根斯坦打了个比方，我们每个人都有一个盒子，里面装着别人看不到的东西。我们称那个东西为“甲虫”。每个人都说他们通过查看自己的盒子就知道甲虫是什么——但我们每个人看到的甲虫可能都不一样。我们都知道，当我们说“甲虫”时，我们的意思是“我的盒子里有什么”，而不管每个盒子里装的是什么。

To demonstrate his ideas of private and public language, Wittgenstein used the analogy that we each have a box with something in it that no one else can see. We call that thing a “beetle.” Everyone says they know what a beetle is by looking in his or her own box—but we may all have something different. We all know that when we say “beetle,” we mean “what’s inside my box,” regardless of what each box contains.

参见：LOGIC能告诉我们什么？

See also: What can LOGIC tell us?

第一批哲学家使用推理来试图理解他们周围的世界，用理性的解释来取代传统信仰。但是哲学推理既被用来证明宗教信仰的合理性，也被用来反驳宗教信仰，而且有些事情单靠推理是无法解释的。

The first philosophers used reasoning to try to understand the world around them, offering rational explanations in place of conventional beliefs. But philosophical reasoning has been used to justify religious beliefs as well as to contradict them, And there are some things that reason alone cannot explain.

不朽者

The immortals

尽管早期希腊哲学家寻求理性解释来替代传统信仰，但这似乎并未威胁到他们的宗教。他们的宗教观念与我们对至高无上存在的概念截然不同：他们理所当然地认为不朽的神是存在的，但他们的生活与人类相似，他们不会指挥人类应该如何行事。尽管如此，很少有哲学家敢于公开宣称自己是无神论者，因为批评传统的神灵观念并不是一个好主意。柏拉图等哲学家并不简单地将至高无上存在或不朽的灵魂等事物视为信仰，而是用推理来证明对这些事物的信仰是正当的。

Although the early Greek philosophers sought rational explanations as an alternative to traditional beliefs, this did not appear to threaten their religion. Their idea of religion was very different from our notions of a supreme being: It was taken for granted that immortal gods existed, but their lives were similar to humans’, and they did not dictate how humans should behave. Still, few philosophers dared to be openly atheist since it was not a good idea to criticize traditional ideas of the gods. Rather than simply accept such things as a supreme being or an immortal soul as a matter of faith, philosophers such as Plato used reasoning to justify belief in them.

基督教和伊斯兰教

Christianity and Islam

随着基督教在欧洲的发展，人们对理性思维的态度发生了巨大变化。中世纪生活的各个方面都受教会的支配，教会要求人们绝对信仰教会的教义。神学（对上帝和宗教信仰的研究）优先于哲学，人们对希腊哲学家的遗产持怀疑态度，甚至常常怀有敌意。慢慢地，柏拉图和亚里士多德的思想被接受，但哲学推理（被解释为上帝赋予的能力）主要用于为信仰条款提供理性的依据，例如上帝的存在或天堂和地狱。另一方面，伊斯兰教认为其信仰与西方哲学之间几乎没有矛盾。除了神学之外，伊斯兰学者还研究和改进了希腊哲学家的作品，并在数学和科学方面取得了巨大进步。他们含蓄地承认信仰和理性都有一席之地。

With the growth of Christianity in Europe, attitudes toward rational thought changed dramatically. All aspects of medieval life were dominated by the Church, which expected absolute faith in its doctrines. Theology (the study of God and religious beliefs) took precedence over philosophy, and the legacy of Greek philosophers was viewed with suspicion and often hostility. Slowly, ideas from Plato and Aristotle were accepted, but philosophical reasoning (which was explained as a God-given ability) was largely used to provide rational justifications for articles of faith, such as the existence of God, or heaven and hell. Islam, on the other hand, saw little incompatibility between its beliefs and Western philosophy. Alongside theology, Islamic scholars studied and refined the work of Greek philosophers, and made great advances in math and science. They implicitly recognized that faith and reason both have a place.

世俗世界？

A secular world?

在欧洲文艺复兴时期，教会失去了大部分权力。宗教领袖被政治领袖取代，社会以道德哲学推理而非神圣戒律为基础制定法律。科学革命也正在进行，挑战了许多宗教信仰。人们认为理性思维和宗教信仰可以共存，但两者完全不同。尽管 19 世纪唯物主义哲学蓬勃发展，主张只有物质才能存在，也出现了一些哲学家，他们认为任何不能用理性解释的事物都是无处容身的，但这种观点一直延续到现在。今天，大多数哲学家都承认有些事情无法用理性证明，哲学和科学不能回答所有问题。尽管推理，尤其是科学，可能与宗教的一些基本信仰相矛盾，但仍有许多科学家和哲学家有宗教信仰。然而，当推理被用来支持已经被信仰接受的东西，或者当信仰被用来代替推理时，就会出现危险。当理性和科学的论据因宗教或政治教条而被否定时，理性的辩论就会变得困难。

During the Renaissance in Europe, the Church lost much of its power. Religious leaders were replaced with political ones, and societies based their laws on the reasoning of moral philosophy rather than divine commandments. A scientific revolution was also under way, challenging many religious beliefs. The idea grew that rational thought and religious faith could coexist, but were entirely separate. This view has persisted to the present, despite the growth in the 19th century of materialist philosophy, which asserted that only material things can exist, and the emergence of philosophers who argued that there is no place for anything that can’t be explained by reason. Today, most philosophers accept that some things cannot be proven by reason, and that philosophy and science can’t answer everything. And even though reasoning, and science in particular, may contradict some of the basic beliefs of religion, there are many scientists and philosophers who have religious faith. However, the danger occurs when reasoning is used to prop up something that has already been accepted on faith, or when faith is used as a substitute for reasoning. When rational and scientific arguments are denied on the strength of religious or political dogma, rational debate can be difficult.

参见：什么是真实的？|存在不朽的灵魂吗？

See also: What is REAL? | Is there such a thing as an IMMORTAL soul?

哲学的大部分内容都涉及我们周围的世界以及我们对它的理解，似乎与我们的日常生活关系不大。然而，被称为道德哲学或伦理学的哲学分支研究我们对是非善恶的看法，以及我们判断和行动的道德基础。

Much of philosophy is concerned with questions about the world around us and our understanding of it, and can seem to have little to do with our day-to-day lives. The branch of philosophy known as moral philosophy, or ethics, however, examines our ideas of right and wrong, good and bad, and the moral basis for our judgments and actions.

美德是什么？

What is virtue?

像其他哲学领域一样，道德哲学的出现是为了为那些被传统所接受的信念寻找一种合理的解释。善恶观念通常由宗教或传统决定，法律则描述正确或错误的行为。但是，像苏格拉底这样的哲学家并不满足于接受某种行为的正确性或错误性。他们试图找出这些行为的属性，从而确定它们在道德上是好是坏。苏格拉底通过挑战传统观念来解决这个问题。通过提出“什么是美德？”这个基本问题，他试图定义善恶的道德属性，我们以此为基础来判断我们的行为在道德上是对是错。道德哲学试图通过理性论证来识别这些道德属性，从而为我们的道德判断提供合理的依据。

Like other areas of philosophy, moral philosophy emerged as an attempt to find a rational explanation for beliefs that were simply accepted by convention. Ideas of good and bad were generally dictated by religion or tradition, with laws describing right or wrong behavior. But philosophers such as Socrates weren’t content to accept the rightness or wrongness of an action. They tried to identify the properties of these actions that make them morally either good or bad. Socrates approached the problem by challenging conventional ideas. By asking the fundamental question “What is virtue?” he sought to define the moral properties of good and bad that we use as a basis for judging whether our actions are morally right or wrong. Moral philosophy tries to identify these moral properties by rational argument, in order to provide reasonable grounds for our ethical judgments.

是/应该问题

The is/ought problem

然而，大卫休谟并不相信道德可以通过理性论证来判断。通过推理，我们可以证明某事物是怎样的，但是休谟认为，这不同于说明它应该怎样——事实世界和价值世界是有区别的。我们不能从“是”推导出“应该”，所以理性不能成为道德判断的基础。他认为许多道德哲学都犯了一个错误，即通过推理来确定事实，然后在没有任何依据的情况下推断出道德价值：道德规则不能是理性论证的结论。休谟认为，他所谓的“激情”——我们的情绪和本能驱动力——塑造了我们的思想和行为，然后我们通过推理为其辩解。同样，我们有“情感”，即道德感，它指导我们的道德决策，而我们的道德规则正是源于此。

David Hume, however, was unconvinced that morality can be judged by reasoned argument. By reasoning, we can demonstrate how something is, but, Hume argued, this is different from saying how it ought to be—there is a difference between the world of fact and the world of value. We can’t derive an “ought” from an “is,” so reason cannot be a basis for moral judgments. He felt that much of moral philosophy made the mistake of establishing facts by reasoning, and then inferring a moral value with no justification: Rules of morality cannot be conclusions of a reasoned argument. Hume believed that what he called “passions”—our emotions and instinctive drives—shape our ideas and behavior, which we then justify by reasoning. Similarly, we have a “sentiment,” a moral sense, which guides our ethical decisions, and it is from this that we derive our moral rules.

嘘！好极了！

Boo! Hurrah!

其他哲学家也对理性是否能支撑道德规则持怀疑态度。英国哲学家 AJ 艾尔在 20 世纪 30 年代呼应休谟的观点，他提出，关于道德的陈述似乎在陈述事实，但实际上它们只是表达态度。道德规则，例如“杀人是错误的”，看起来好像陈述了一个真实的事实。然而，根据艾尔的说法，它所做的只是表达对杀戮的反对态度——就像说“嘘杀戮！”它实际上什么也没说。“慈善是好的”也是如此。这表达了说话者对慈善的感受（“慈善万岁！”），但就像“杀人是错误的”一样，它没有实际意义，既不是真的也不是假的。艾尔认为，所有所谓的道德规则都是毫无意义的——它们只能表达一个人的情感。另一方面，“我不赞成杀戮”是一个有意义的主张。它陈述了关于自己的事实，而这个事实可能是错误的（可能是谎言）。艾尔的理论被称为表现主义，或“嘘/欢呼理论”。和休谟一样，艾尔认为道德根植于我们的情感。

Other philosophers were also skeptical about whether reason could underpin moral rules. Echoing Hume’s ideas, British philosopher A. J. Ayer suggested in the 1930s that statements about morality might seem to state facts, but in reality they just express attitudes. A moral rule, such as “Killing is wrong,” looks as though it states a true fact. According to Ayer, however, all it does is express an attitude of disapproval toward killing—like saying “Boo to killing!” It doesn’t actually state anything. The same is true of “Charity is good.” This expresses how the speaker feels about charity (“Hurrah to charity!”), but, like “Killing is wrong,” it has no real meaning, and is neither true nor false. Ayer argued that all so-called moral rules are meaningless—they can only ever express a person’s emotions. On the other hand, “I disapprove of killing” is a meaningful claim. It states a fact about oneself, and this fact could be false (it could be a lie). Ayer’s theory is known as expressivism, or the “Boo/Hurrah theory.” Like Hume, Ayer thought that morality is rooted in our emotions.

大拇指朝下

大卫休谟和 AJ 艾尔认为，我们无法推理道德，因为我们自己的主观感受将决定我们是否认为某种行为或观点在道德上是正确的或错误的。

David Hume and A. J. Ayer believed that we cannot reason about morality because our own subjective feelings will determine whether or not we consider an action or opinion to be morally right or wrong.

个人与政治

PERSONAL AND POLITICAL

伦理学或道德哲学研究我们如何判断某种行为在道德上是好是坏。除了决定我们自己的道德准则（我们认为什么是对的或错的）之外，我们还共同制定基于道德判断的法律。这些法律不仅可以防止犯罪和不公正，还可以决定我们如何治理社会（政治制度）。

The field of ethics, or moral philosophy, examines the ways we can judge whether an action is morally good or bad. In addition to deciding our own individual moral code—what we think is right or wrong—together we establish laws based on ethical judgments. These not only prevent crimes and injustices, but determine how we govern our societies—the political systems.

参见：你怎么知道的？|一定有一个合乎逻辑的解释

See also: How do you KNOW that? | There must be a LOGICAL explanation

我们用道德判断来决定什么是善什么是恶，以及在特定情况下我们该如何行动。我们还用更一般的观念来指导我们的生活方式，即什么是道德上正确的行为。也许过上道德上美好的生活也意味着生活可以幸福。

We use our moral judgment to decide what we consider good and bad, and how we should act in certain situations. We also use more general ideas about what constitutes morally correct behavior as a guide to the way we lead our lives. And perhaps leading a morally good life means that it can be a happy one, too.

过上有道德的生活

Leading a life of virtue

古希腊文化的一个重要组成部分是每个人都应努力追求的“美好生活”。希腊人用一个词来形容这种美好生活： eudaimonia（字面意思是“美好的精神”），它不仅体现了道德上正确的生活方式，也体现了满足或幸福的生活方式——我们今天所认为的充实的生活。以道德上正确的方式行事会带来那种满足感，因为我们在按照自己的原则行事时会感到满意，而在做一些我们认为不合道德的事情时会感到不安。哲学家们试图确定是什么让事物在道德上好或坏，并定义美德，这是过上美好幸福生活的关键。

An important part of ancient Greek culture was the idea of the “good life” that each person should aim to lead. The Greeks had a word for it: eudaimonia (literally meaning “good spirit”), which embodied the idea of not only a morally correct way of life, but also a contented or happy one—what we today would consider a fulfilled life. Acting in a morally correct way leads to that kind of fulfillment because we feel satisfied in acting according to our principles, and feel uneasy when doing something we regard as ethically wrong. Philosophers sought to determine what it is that makes things morally good or bad, and to define virtue, which was central to living a good and happy life.

充分发挥我们的潜力

Achieving our full potential

古希腊人使用arete这个词，我们将其译为“美德”，但事实上，它有更广泛的含义，与“美好生活”的概念有关。除了传达道德正确的理念之外，arete还传达了卓越的理念，以及力求充分发挥自己的潜力就是“有德”的理念。苏格拉底认为，为了有德行，必须知道什么是arete ，即构成美德的属性。拥有这些知识就是有德行；你不可能知道arete却没有过上有德行的生活。行为不当的人只是因为不知道美德是什么。他总结说， Arete对“美好生活”是必要且充分的：如果你不知道美德是什么，你就无法过上正确而充实的生活，但是如果你知道，你就只能过上正确而充实的生活。

Ancient Greeks used the word arete, which we translate as “virtue,” but which, in fact, has a broader meaning, connected with the notion of the “good life.” In addition to conveying the idea of moral correctness, arete conveys the notion of excellence, and the idea that it is “virtuous” to aim to achieve one’s full potential. Socrates argued that in order to act virtuously, it is necessary to know what arete is—the properties that make up virtue. To have that knowledge is to be virtuous; you cannot know arete and not lead a virtuous life. And people who behave incorrectly only do so because they do not know what virtue is. Arete, he concluded, is necessary and sufficient for the “good life”: If you do not know what virtue is, you cannot lead a correct and fulfilling life, but if you do, you cannot lead anything other than a correct and fulfilling life.

美德还是快乐？

Virtue or pleasure?

其他哲学家，尤其是亚里士多德，也同意美德是幸福生活的必要条件，但美德本身并不够。还有其他美好的事物有助于过上充实的生活，比如朋友和家人、健康和物质享受。还有一些事物能给我们带来快乐，比如财富和权力。伊壁鸠鲁甚至认为快乐是最大的善，痛苦是最大的恶。他认为道德可以通过它所造成的快乐或痛苦的量来衡量，因此美好生活的目标是最大限度地享受快乐，最大限度地减少痛苦。但这只是少数人的观点，其他学派也采用了苏格拉底的观点。例如，犬儒学派提倡过一种符合自然的简单美德生活，拒绝一切纯粹的感官享受。后来，斯多葛学派进一步发展了这一思想，提倡一种纯粹的美德生活，在这种生活中，健康、财富和权力等给我们带来快乐的外部因素是无关紧要的，而那些给我们带来痛苦的因素则是可以容忍的。这些思想流派之间的分歧在后来的道德和政治哲学家们身上再次浮现，他们对于某一行为的道德性应该根据其后果还是其意图来判断存在分歧。

Other philosophers, notably Aristotle, agreed that virtue is necessary for a good and happy life, but said that it is not sufficient on its own. There are other good things that contribute to leading a fulfilled life, such as friends and family, health, and material comfort. There are also things that give us pleasure, such as wealth and power. Epicurus went so far as to argue that pleasure is the greatest good, and pain the greatest bad. He thought that morality can be measured by the amount of pleasure or pain it causes, and so the aim of a good life is to maximize pleasure and minimize pain. But this was a minority view, and other schools of thought adopted Socrates’s view. The Cynics, for example, advocated living a simple life of virtue in accordance with nature, rejecting all purely sensual pleasures. Later on, the Stoics developed this idea further, advocating a purely virtuous life in which external factors giving us pleasure, such as health, wealth, and power, are irrelevant, and those bringing us pain are to be tolerated. The division between these strands of thought resurfaced among later moral and political philosophers, who disagreed as to whether the morality of an action should be judged by its consequences, or its intentions.

美好生活就是幸福生活

尽管苏格拉底、犬儒学派和斯多葛学派将美好生活等同于有德行的生活，但亚里士多德和伊壁鸠鲁认为，我们既需要美德，也需要感官享受，才能感到满足。

Although Socrates, the Cynics, and the Stoics equated a good life with a virtuous one, Aristotle and Epicurus felt that we need both virtue and sensual pleasures in order to feel fulfilled.

自然主义谬误

THE NATURALISTIC FALLACY

根据 GE Moore 的说法，不应将诸如“好”之类的伦理概念与诸如“令人愉悦”之类的事实概念混为一谈。认为“好”与“令人愉悦”意思相同是错误的，后者描述的是事物的自然属性。伦理术语不是事实性的——它们不是指自然界中的事物，而是描述非自然属性，我们通过直觉或道德感来识别这些属性。

According to G. E. Moore, ethical notions such as “good” and factual notions such as “pleasurable” should not be confused. It is a mistake to think that “good” means the same thing as “pleasurable,” which describes a natural property of something. Ethical terms are not factual—they do not refer to things in the natural world, but describe non-natural properties, which we recognize by intuition, or moral sense.

参见：没有什么好与坏 |对与错：一切都是相对的…… |你想生活在什么样的社会？

See also: There’s no such thing as GOOD and BAD | RIGHT and WRONG: It’s all relative… | What kind of SOCIETY do you want to live in?

大多数人都会毫不犹豫地同意某些事情，比如种族灭绝和酷刑，在道德上是错误的，无论你是谁。但这是真的吗？一些哲学家认为，所有道德都是相对的，取决于文化，而另一些人则认为至少存在一些绝对的道德。

Most people would agree without hesitation that certain things, such as genocide and torture, are morally wrong, no matter who you are. But is this true? Some philosophers have argued that all morality is relative, dependent on culture, while others maintain that there are at least some moral absolutes.

我们的价值观是主观的

Our values are subjective

当苏格拉底和其他古希腊道德哲学家试图确定美德的属性以确定道德的定义时，另一群思想家出现了，他们认为对于某件事是非对错的问题，没有单一的简单答案。诡辩家最初是律师，他们利用自己的修辞和辩论技巧在法庭上为案件辩护，收取费用。通常，两个对立的客户都声称自己是对的。由此，诡辩家哲学家如普罗泰戈拉发展出这样的观念：每个论点都有不止一方的观点，对错的观念取决于我们的看法——道德基于主观价值观。什么是对的或错的，很大程度上取决于社会群体的文化和传统，因此任何断言或行为的道德性都必须根据该群体认为可以接受的标准来判断。

While Socrates and other ancient Greek moral philosophers tried to identify the properties of virtue to establish what it is that defines morality, another group of thinkers emerged who believed that there was no single simple answer to the question of whether something is right or wrong. The Sophists were originally lawyers, who, for a fee, used their skills in rhetoric and debate to argue cases in the courts. Often, two opposing clients both claimed to be in the right. From this, Sophist philosophers such as Protagoras developed the notion that there is more than one side to every argument, and that ideas of right and wrong depend on our perception—morality is based on subjective values. What is deemed right or wrong is largely determined by the culture and traditions of a social group, so the morality of any assertion or action must be judged relative to what is considered acceptable by that group.

由你决定

It’s up to you

认为任何事物的对错取决于不同社会群体的规范的观点被称为相对主义。不同的文化有不同的习俗，人们对道德正确性的态度会随着时间而改变。例如，奴隶制在古希腊是道德上可接受的，但在今天的我们看来显然是错误的。同样，不仅各国之间，而且各国内部对死刑的道德合理性也存在分歧。对于相对主义者来说，道德只是个人或特定时间和地点的大多数人所认可的东西。从这个角度来看，道德判断只是一个观点或品味的问题。当我们觉得某件事在道德上是错误的，那对我们来说是正确的。对于那些有不同看法的人来说，那是错误的。没有客观真理。

The view that the rightness or wrongness of anything depends on the norms of different social groups is known as relativism. Different cultures have different customs, and attitudes about what is considered ethically correct can change over time. Slavery, for example, was morally acceptable in ancient Greece, but seems obviously wrong to us today. Likewise, opinion is divided not only from country to country, but also within countries, about the moral justification for the death penalty. For the relativist, morality is simply what the individual or perhaps the majority of people in a certain time and place approve of. Looked at in this way, moral judgments are simply a matter of opinion or taste. When we feel something is morally wrong, that is true for us. For those who feel differently, it is false. There is no objective truth.

不，这并非完全是相对的

No, it’s not all relative

相对主义被用来为对他人观点和习俗的更大容忍度辩护，尤其是在多元文化社会中。但是，我们很难接受这样的观点：我们不能批评任何道德主张——例如，当决定是否应该谴责在其他文化中可以接受的残酷刑罚制度等事情时。如果道德只是一种文化观点，那么我们就没有理由批评暴政和种族灭绝。如果相对主义发展到极端，它会让我们相信“任何事情都可能发生”，但尽管社会和个人在许多道德问题上可能存在分歧，但某些事情几乎普遍被认为是错误的。大多数人相信存在绝对的道德观念——例如，偷窃是错误的——这些都反映在每种文化的伦理中。

Relativism has been used to justify greater tolerance of other people’s views and customs, especially in a multicultural society. But it is difficult to accept the idea that we can’t criticize any moral claims—for example, when deciding if it is right to condemn things such as brutal penal systems when these are acceptable in other cultures. If morality is simply a matter of cultural opinion, we have no grounds for criticizing even tyranny and genocide. Taken to its extreme, relativism would have us believe that “anything goes,” but although societies and individuals may disagree on many moral issues, certain things are almost universally considered wrong. Most people believe that there are such things as moral absolutes—for example, that stealing is wrong—and these are reflected in the ethics of each culture.

见仁见智

道德相对主义者认为，不同文化对正确与错误的看法各不相同，因此不存在客观真理。但大多数人不同意这一论点。

Moral relativists argue that opinions of what is right or wrong differ from culture to culture, so there is no objective truth. But most people would disagree with this argument.

自由选择

FREEDOM TO CHOOSE

伊曼纽尔·康德持与相对主义相反的观点，他认为道德和科学一样，都基于理性，道德法则和科学法则一样，没有例外——理性表明在道德上正确的事情就一定是正确的。我们应该遵循他所谓的绝对命令：“只按照你可以认为是普遍法则的准则行事。”

Taking the opposite view from relativism, Immanuel Kant proposed that morality is based on reason, as science is, and moral laws, like scientific laws, can have no exceptions—something that reason shows is morally right must always be right. We should be guided by what he called the categorical imperative: “Act only according to maxims that you can will also to be universal laws.”

参见：没有什么 好与坏之分|什么是美好的生活？

See also: There’s no such thing as GOOD and BAD | What is a GOOD LIFE?

面对道德问题，我们必须考虑许多因素。我们可能会决定按照严格的道德准则行事，无论后果如何，我们认为什么是对的，什么是错的。另一种选择是检查我们决定的后果：但从道德角度来说，后果真的那么重要吗？

Faced with an ethical problem, there are a number of factors we must consider. We may decide to act according to a strict moral code of what we regard as right or wrong, regardless of the consequences. Another option is to examine the consequences of our decision: but are consequences all that matter, morally speaking?

结果决定一切

The outcome is everything

中世纪时期，道德观念是由宗教而非哲学塑造的。犹太教、基督教和伊斯兰教的圣经被认为是上帝的话语，其中的法律规定了什么是对的，什么是错的。在欧洲，教会的权力在文艺复兴时期开始减弱，出现了由世俗领导人统治的国家，他们使用人为的法律而不是上帝赋予的法律。统治者通常都有顾问，其中一位是意大利人尼科洛·马基雅维利，他写了一本臭名昭著的统治者手册《君主论》，他在书中建议，传统的个人道德不应该影响政治决策。统治者必须准备好为了国家的利益采取不道德的行为（例如，使用暴力或欺骗）。尽管马基雅维利可能只是在讽刺统治者做了什么，而不是他们应该做什么，但他提出的“为达目的不择手段”的观点非常有影响力。他暗示，道德应该根据行为的后果而不是行为本身来判断。

Ideas of morality were shaped by religion rather than philosophy during the medieval period. The holy scriptures of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, believed to be the word of God, contained laws that specified what things were considered right and wrong. In Europe, the power of the Church began to wane during the Renaissance, and nations emerged that were ruled by secular leaders using human-made, rather than God-given, laws. Rulers generally had advisers, and one of these, the Italian Niccolò Machiavelli, wrote a notorious handbook for rulers, The Prince, in which he suggested that conventional personal morality should not influence political decisions. A ruler must be prepared to act immorally (for example, by using violence or deceit) for the good of the state. Although he may well have been satirically describing what rulers do, rather than what they ought to do, Machiavelli’s message that the ends justify the means was a very influential one. Morality, he implied, should be judged on the consequences of actions, rather than on the actions themselves.

取悦大多数人

Pleasing most people

从马基雅维利时代开始，教会对社会组织方式的影响越来越小，道德哲学也不再仅仅用于为宗教道德规则辩护。相反，哲学家们提出了基于理性而非教条的替代模式，出现了基于结果而非道德绝对的道德体系。其中最重要的也许是英国哲学家杰里米·边沁提出的，他提出，可以通过权衡一种行为的利弊来判断其道德性。他认为，利弊可以通过其带来的快乐或痛苦的程度以及受影响的人数来衡量——结果可以用他所谓的“幸福计算”几乎数学地计算出来。如果某件事能最大限度地提高快乐并最大限度地减少痛苦，那么它就可以被认为是道德上的善：能给最多人带来幸福的东西就是衡量是非的标准。

From Machiavelli’s time onward, the Church had less and less influence in the way society was organized, and moral philosophy was no longer simply used to justify religious rules of morality. Instead, philosophers suggested alternative models, based on reason rather than dogma, and ethical systems based on outcomes rather than moral absolutes appeared. Perhaps the most important of these was developed by the English philosopher Jeremy Bentham, who proposed that the morality of an action can be judged by weighing up its beneficial and harmful consequences. These, he suggested, can be measured by the amount of pleasure or pain they give, and by the number of people that are affected—and the results could be calculated almost mathematically in what he called a “calculus of felicity.” Something can be considered morally good if it maximizes pleasure and minimizes pain: What brings happiness to the greatest number of people is the measure of right and wrong.

欢乐弥撒

杰里米·边沁建议，我们应该根据决策的后果来做决定——能让大多数人感到高兴的事情在道德上一定是好的。

Jeremy Bentham suggested that we should make decisions based on the consequences of those decisions—something that makes most people happy must be morally good.

我们有道德责任

We have a moral duty

然而，有些哲学家并不接受以结果为基础的道德观念。其中最杰出的是伊曼纽尔·康德，他认为事情要么是对的，要么是错的，没有例外：道德是一种责任，不应根据后果来判断，无论后果有多大危害或多大好处。例如，如果你认为说谎是错误的，康德会认为，你有责任在任何时候都说实话。即使是为了保护某人而说一个“善意的谎言”——例如，向暴力团伙谎报你的朋友在哪里——在道德上也是错误的。康德强调，我们每个人都有自由决定我们认为什么是道德上正确的，并且只能选择那些我们愿意接受的不可打破的规则。

Some philosophers, however, did not accept the idea of morality based on outcomes. Foremost among them was Immanuel Kant, who believed that something is either right or wrong, and there can be no exceptions: Morality is a matter of duty, and should not be judged on consequences, no matter how harmful or beneficial they may be. If, for example, you believe that it is wrong to tell lies, Kant would argue that it is your moral duty to tell the truth at all times. Even telling a “white lie” to protect someone—for example, lying to a violent gang about where your friend is—is morally wrong. Kant stressed that we each have the freedom to decide what we consider to be morally correct, and must choose only those things that we are prepared to accept as unbreakable rules.

黄金法则

THE GOLDEN RULE

几乎每一个道德哲学体系和大多数宗教的核心都是某种版本的黄金法则：“己所不欲，勿施于人。”这体现了互惠原则——我们应该像希望别人对待自己那样对待他人——它既适用于意图，也适用于结果。

At the heart of almost every system of moral philosophy, and most religions, is some version of the Golden Rule: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” This embodies the principle of reciprocity—that we should treat others as we would wish to be treated ourselves—and it applies to both intentions and outcomes.

参见：理性 与信仰相容吗？|对与错：一切都是相对的……

See also: Are REASON and FAITH compatible? | RIGHT and WRONG: It’s all relative…

道德哲学关注的是正确与错误、善与恶的概念，以及我们用什么标准来判断道德主张。与这些观念密切相关的是它们如何应用于我们的社会行为，特别是我们如何组织我们的社会——这是政治哲学的课题。

Moral philosophy is concerned with notions of what is right and wrong, or good and bad, and what criteria we use to judge moral assertions. Closely connected to these ideas is how they are applied to our social behavior, and in particular how we organize our societies—the business of political philosophy.

城市生活的道德

The morals of city life

在希腊文明成为主要文化和政治强国的同时，西方哲学也在希腊兴起。人们定居在以城邦为中心的社会中，各种类型的政府不断发展壮大。特别是在雅典这个城邦中，哲学家们将注意力转向美德和伦理问题，然后转向城邦本身的道德——政治。过上“美好生活”的概念不仅与个人公民有关，而且与整个城邦有关。像 城邦这样的公民社会需要组织起来，以便其公民过上“美好”的生活，同时也确保他们能够享受正义和自由。政治哲学的发展不仅是为了研究社会的组织和决定其结构的法律，也是为了研究社会的治理方式——谁制定法律，以及如何执行法律。

Western philosophy emerged in Greece at the same time that Greek civilization became established as a major cultural and political power. People settled in societies centered on a city-state, or polis, and various types of government evolved to organize them. In one polis in particular, Athens, philosophers turned their attention to questions of virtue and ethics, and then to the morality of the polis itself—its politics. The concept of what it means to lead a “good life” was seen to relate not only to individual citizens, but to the city-state as a whole. Civil societies like the polis need to be organized so that their citizens can lead “good” lives, but also to ensure that they can enjoy both justice and freedom. Political philosophy developed to examine not only the organization of societies, and the laws that determine their structure, but also how they are governed—who makes the laws, and how they are enforced.

哲学家统治

Philosophers rule

柏拉图是最早的政治哲学家之一，他在《理想国》一书中详细描述了他所认为的理想社会。他写道，人们聚集在一起组成像城邦这样的社会，是为了按照美德的概念过上“美好的生活”。他认为，国家的目的就是为他们提供这样做的手段。普通公民不能简单地被放任不管，让他们独自过上有德的生活，因为他们不了解理想的美德，而这只能通过哲学推理来获得。因此，柏拉图断言国家应该由掌握必要知识的精英来统治，即一群哲学家国王，他们可以指导和教育他们的臣民。普通人缺乏自我管理所必需的知识和技能的想法今天仍然存在，即使在代议制民主国家也是如此，在这些国家，选举出一批专业政治家来代表人民的观点。

One of the first political philosophers was Plato, who gave a detailed description of what he considered an ideal society in his book The Republic. He wrote that people come together to form societies such as the polis in order to live a “good life,” according to the notion of virtue. It is the purpose of the state, he suggested, to provide the means for them to do so. Ordinary citizens cannot simply be left alone to live virtuously because they have no knowledge of the ideal form of virtue, which can only be accessed through philosophical reasoning. For that reason, Plato asserted that the state should be ruled by an elite with the necessary knowledge—a class of philosopher-kings, who can guide and educate their subjects. The idea that ordinary people lack the necessary knowledge and skill to govern themselves persists today, even in representative democracies, in which a professional class of politicians has been elected to represent the views of the people.

权力游戏

亚里士多德根据谁拥有权力以及权力为谁使用来定义政府形式。白色棋子代表他眼中的道德形式，黑色棋子代表腐败形式。

Aristotle defined forms of government according to who has power, and for whom that power is used. The white chess pieces represent what he saw as the virtuous forms, and the black pieces, the corrupt forms.

规则是为你而制定的，还是为了共同利益而制定的？

Rules for you, or for the common good?

正如在哲学的几乎所有方面一样，亚里士多德在政治问题上采取了与柏拉图截然不同的立场。亚里士多德以他典型的有条不紊的方式，根据两个标准分析和分类了各种可能的政府形式：谁统治，代表谁统治？一个国家可以由一个人统治，也可以由一个精选的团体统治，或者由全体人民统治。他把那些为了公共利益而统治的政体称为“真正的”政体：君主制、贵族制和政体。相反，那些为了自己的利益而统治的政体——暴政、寡头政治和民主（参见 民主）——他描述为“变态的”或“腐败的”。总的来说，亚里士多德认为政体（由公民为公共利益而统治）是理想的政府形式，但民主（由人民为自己的利益而统治）是腐败形式中危害最小的一种。今天，大多数西方民主国家似乎都证实了这一评估。但世界上仍然存在许多“腐败”的政府形式，一些神权政治（以神的名义由宗教官员统治）已经拒绝了代议制民主的理想。

As in almost every aspect of philosophy, Aristotle took a very different stance from Plato in political matters. In his typically methodical way, Aristotle analyzed and classified the various possible forms of government, according to two criteria: Who rules, and on whose behalf? A state may be ruled by a single ruler, by a select group, or by the people as a whole. Those that ruled for the common good he called the “true” constitutions: monarchy, aristocracy, and polity. By contrast, those that ruled in their own interest—tyranny, oligarchy, and democracy (see Democracy)—he described as “perverted” or “corrupt.” On balance, Aristotle believed that polity (government by the citizens for the common good) is the ideal form of government, but democracy (government by the people in their own interest) is the least harmful of the corrupt forms. Today, most Western democracies would seem to confirm this assessment. But there are still many “corrupt” forms of government worldwide, and some theocracies (governed by religious officials in the name of God) have rejected the ideal of representative democracy.

民主

DEMOCRACY

亚里士多德认为民主是“变态的”，这似乎令人费解，但他指的是古典雅典，当时只有特定阶层的人才有权参与政治进程。现代代议制民主的理念——亚伯拉罕·林肯将其描述为“民有、民治、民享的政府”——更接近亚里士多德的“政体”。

Aristotle’s view of democracy as “perverted” may seem puzzling, but he was referring to classical Athens, where only a certain class of men had the right to participate in the political process. Modern ideas of representative democracy—described by Abraham Lincoln as “government of the people, by the people, for the people”—are closer to Aristotle’s “polity.”

参见：什么是美好生活？|什么使社会变得文明？

See also: What is a GOOD LIFE? | What makes a society CIVILIZED?

随着人们聚集在越来越大的社会群体中生活，文明也随之演变，首先是村庄，然后是城镇、城市和国家。这些社会提供了优势，包括保护和发展工业的手段。另一方面，我们可能不得不牺牲一些自由才能享受文明生活。

Civilizations evolved as people gathered to live in increasingly big social groups, first in villages, and then in towns, cities, and nations. These societies offer advantages, including protection and the means to develop industries. On the other hand, we may have to sacrifice some of our freedoms to enjoy a civilized life.

自然状态

A state of nature

亚里士多德曾将人类描述为“政治动物”，这意味着他认为我们自然而然地希望生活在像希腊城邦这样的社会中。然而，后来的哲学家们却想找出这些社会是如何产生的，以便更好地理解它们应该如何组织起来。托马斯·霍布斯将文明社会的生活与他所描述的“自然状态”的生活进行了比较。他对自然，尤其是人性持悲观看法，并说，如果任由人们自行其是，他们只会为自己的利益行事，这就是“人人为己”的情况。在霍布斯设想的世界里，每个人都会在永无休止的战争中相互对抗，没有人能够创造繁荣，更不用说追求生活中更美好的事物了。为了避免这种情况，人们走到一起，放弃一些自由去做自己想做的事情，以换取文明社会的保护。

Aristotle famously described man as a “political animal,” meaning that he saw it as natural that we should want to live in societies such as the polis, the Greek city-state. Later philosophers, however, wanted to find out how these societies came about, in order to better understand how they should be organized. Thomas Hobbes took the approach of comparing life in a civilized society to life in what he described as a “state of nature.” He took a dim view of nature, and especially human nature, and said that, left to their own devices, people would act simply in their own interest, and it would be a case of “every man for himself.” In the world Hobbes envisioned, everyone would be pitted against one another in a perpetual state of war, and no one would be able to create prosperity, let alone pursue the finer things in life. To avoid this scenario, people come together, giving up some of their freedom to do what they want in return for the protection of a civilized society.

社会契约

The social contract

当公民与某种形式的主权权威（领导人或政府）之间存在这种互惠安排或“社会契约”时，公民社会就形成了。主权权威制定并执行法律，保护人民，让他们继续生活。霍布斯认为，为了防止社会重新陷入无政府（无法无天）的“自然状态”，必须有一个强大的领导者、君主或主权保护者，他的权力来自人民。一代人之后的约翰·洛克接受了社会契约的概念，但对“自然状态”有着截然不同的看法。他认为，这不是一种无政府状态，即使在公民社会之外，人们也会自然地互相尊重。事实上，他们会按照道德的“自然法则”行事，承认他人享有食物、水、住所等自然权利。公民社会的成立不是为了限制我们的权利，而是为了确保我们的权利，社会契约是人民任命政府作为他们利益的手段，在任何冲突中充当公正的法官。洛克总结说，权力应该由人民赋予一个民选的代议制政府，而不是一个强大的领导人。

Civil societies are formed when such a reciprocal arrangement, or “social contract,” exists between the citizens and some form of sovereign authority—a leader or government—which makes and enforces laws to protect the people and allow them to get on with their lives. Hobbes believed that to prevent the society from falling back into an anarchic (lawless) “state of nature,” there has to be a strong leader, a monarch or sovereign protector, who is given authority by the people. John Locke, a generation later, accepted the notion of a social contract, but had a very different idea of the “state of nature.” He believed that it was not a state of anarchy, and that people would naturally treat each other with respect, even outside civil society. Indeed, they would behave according to a moral “law of nature,” recognizing the natural rights of others to food, water, shelter, and so on. Civil societies are formed not to restrict our rights, but to ensure them, and the social contract is the means by which the people can appoint a government to act on their behalf as an impartial judge in any conflicts. Rather than a strong leader, Locke concluded, the authority should be given by the people to an elected, representative government.

权力归人民

Power to the people

让-雅克·卢梭提出了另一种“自然状态”观点，几乎与霍布斯的观点完全相反。卢梭认为，人类生来自由，如果让他们自己做决定，他们就能和睦相处。他认为，公民社会的形成不是为了保护权利和自由，而是为了保护财产，实际上限制了我们的自然自由。他建议将权力直接交给公民，而不是洛克倡导的代议制政府。在卢梭的体系中，法律来自全体人民——他称之为“公意”——并平等适用于所有人，为所有人谋福利。

Jean-Jacques Rousseau proposed yet another view of the “state of nature,” almost totally opposite from that of Hobbes. Rousseau believed that humans are born free, and can live in harmony with one another if left to make their own decisions. Civil societies, he argued, are not formed to protect rights and freedoms, but are constituted to protect property, and actually restrict our natural freedoms. Instead of the representative government advocated by Locke, he suggested giving power directly to the citizens. In Rousseau’s system, laws would come from the people as a whole—what he called the “general will”—and would apply equally to all and work for the benefit of all.

社会的枷锁

托马斯·霍布斯和约翰·洛克认为社会扮演着保护者的角色，而让·雅克·卢梭则认为财产所有权和社会的其他方面限制了我们控制自己生活的能力。

While Thomas Hobbes and John Locke cast society in a protective role, Jean-Jacques Rousseau argued that property ownership and other aspects of society have restricted our ability to control our own lives.

革命

REVOLUTION

约翰·洛克和让-雅克·卢梭等哲学家的思想对 18 世纪的政治产生了巨大影响，尤其是对法国和美国的革命。卢梭关于限制自由的观点在 卡尔·马克思和弗里德里希·恩格斯的《共产党宣言》中得到了呼应，他们呼吁工人团结起来进行社会主义革命：“你们失去的只是锁链。”

The ideas of philosophers such as John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau had a great impact on 18th-century politics, especially on the revolutions in France and America. Rousseau’s views on restricted freedom were echoed in the Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, who called for workers to unite in socialist revolution: “you have nothing to lose but your chains.”

参见：你想生活在什么样的社会？

See also: What kind of SOCIETY do you want to live in?

要想让人们享受公民社会的好处，就必须有法律来管理他们。虽然这意味着公民不能为所欲为，但这些法律保护他们的财产、安全和健康以及基本权利。然而，要想被接受，这些法律必须被认为是公正的。

For people to enjoy the benefits of a civil society, there have to be laws governing them. Although this means citizens are not free to do whatever they want, these laws protect their property, their security and health, and their basic rights. To be accepted, however, the laws must be considered just.

人们不能到处杀人

People can’t just go around killing

“什么是正义？”这个问题自苏格拉底时代以来就一直困扰着哲学家们，而对于如何组织社会以确保正义，人们有着许多不同的解释。任何类型的政府都会对社会施加规则——保护公民安全的法律。例如，每个社会都有法律来防止谋杀和盗窃等行为，大多数人会认为，剥夺人们杀人和偷盗的权利是公正的，因为它保护我们所有人免受杀人犯和小偷的侵害。但是，法律在多大程度上保护个人权利和自由与在多大程度上限制个人权利和自由之间的平衡很少如此明确。例如，托马斯·霍布斯主张建立独裁政府来保护生命和财产，而另一个极端是让-雅克·卢梭认为法律应该由人民为整个社会的利益而制定——这是自由的表达，而不是限制。

The question “What is justice?” is one that has occupied philosophers since the time of Socrates, and there have been many different interpretations of how society can be organized to ensure justice. Government of any kind imposes rules on a society—laws to protect the security of its citizens. For instance, every society has laws to prevent such things as murder and theft, and most would accept that it is just to deny people the right to go around killing and stealing, since it protects all of us from murderers and thieves. But the balance between how much a law protects individual rights and freedoms, and how much it restricts them, is seldom so clear-cut. Thomas Hobbes, for example, advocated an authoritarian government to protect life and property, while at the other extreme Jean-Jacques Rousseau felt that laws should be determined by the people for the benefit of society as a whole—an expression of freedom rather than a limitation.

在合理范围内我们应该享有自由

We should be free, within reason

在这两个极端之间，约翰·斯图尔特·密尔建立了英国自由主义的原则。他受到杰里米·边沁功利主义思想的影响，功利主义主张道德应该以最大多数人的最大幸福来评判。但密尔认为，将功利主义应用于政治会带来实际问题：大多数人的幸福可能会影响到某些人的幸福。他认为，社会的职责是教导人们将个人幸福与公共利益等同起来，并按照“己所不欲勿施于人”的原则行事。他认为，每个人都应该有追求自己幸福的自由，但社会应该施加一项限制，即“伤害原则”：人们应该自由地做他们想做的事，只要这不会伤害他人或限制他们的自由。一个人的行为只有在影响社会时才与国家有关——政府和法律只应为了保护社会而干涉该人的自由。

Somewhere between these two extremes, John Stuart Mill established the principles of British liberalism. He was influenced by Jeremy Bentham’s idea of utilitarianism, which asserted that morality should be judged by the greatest happiness of the greatest number. But Mill saw that applying this to politics presented practical problems: The happiness of the majority might impinge upon the happiness of some individuals. It was the job of society, he argued, to teach people to equate their individual happiness with the common good, and act according to the principle “do as you would be done by.” He believed that everyone should have the freedom to pursue their own happiness, but that society should impose one restriction, known as the “harm principle”: people should be free to do what they want, as long as this does not harm others, or restrict their liberty. The only time a person’s conduct concerns the state is when it affects society—and government, and the law, should only interfere with that person’s freedom for the protection of society.

社会泡沫

根据约翰·斯图尔特·密尔的说法，正义设定了我们自由的界限——只要我们不伤害他人，或阻止他们追求幸福，我们就应该自由地做我们选择的事情。

According to John Stuart Mill, justice sets the boundaries of our freedom—as long as we do not cause harm to others, or stop them from pursuing happiness, we should be free to do as we choose.

公平还是权利？

Fairness or entitlement?

正义的定义仍是一个争论话题。美国哲学家约翰·罗尔斯和罗伯特·诺齐克提出了两种不同的解释。对罗尔斯来说，正义是公平的问题——权利、资源和社会地位的公平分配。他让我们想象一个理想的社会，以及其中的一切是如何分配的，但不知道我们在这个社会中的地位。这种“无知之幕”（不知道我们的地位）阻止我们受到自身利益的影响，因此我们为所有人创造了一个公平的社会。另一方面，对诺齐克来说，正义是权利的问题：当人们有权获得他们所拥有的东西时，就有了正义。财产必须公平转让，政府只应介入处理无权获得财产的人未经所有者同意而获得财产的情况——例如，当某物被盗时。

The definition of justice is still a topic of debate. American philosophers John Rawls and Robert Nozick have offered two different interpretations. For Rawls, justice is a matter of fairness—a fair distribution of rights, resources, and position in society. He asks us to imagine an ideal society, and how everything is distributed in it, but without knowing what position we would have in that society. This “veil of ignorance” (not knowing our position) stops us from being influenced by our own interest, so we create a fair society for all. For Nozick, on the other hand, justice is a matter of entitlement: There is justice when people are entitled to what they possess. Property must be justly transferred, and the government should only get involved to deal with cases when it is acquired by people not entitled to it, without the owner’s consent—for instance, when something has been stolen.

掌控自己的命运

TAKE CONTROL OF YOUR DESTINY

以赛亚·伯林认为，自由不仅仅是摆脱外部干扰、摆脱强加在我们身上的“枷锁”。这种摆脱 某种事物的自由就是他所说的“消极自由”，还有一种来自内心的“积极自由”。当我们克服内心可能阻碍我们前进的东西，并自由地做出自己的人生选择时，我们就会感受到这种自由。

Freedom, according to Isaiah Berlin, is not just freedom from external interference, from the “chains” imposed on us. This freedom from something is what he calls “negative freedom,” but there is also a “positive freedom” that comes from within. This is the freedom we feel when we overcome things inside us that may hold us back, and are free to make our own choices in life.

参见：为了达到目的可以不择手段吗？|什么使社会变得文明？

See also: Do the ends JUSTIFY the means? | What makes a society CIVILIZED?

文明社会的标志之一是尊重公民的权利。在革命时期的 18 世纪末，哲学家们定义了他们认为社会法律应该保护的基本人权。但直到很久以后，人们才认识到这些权利应该平等地适用于每个人。

One of the marks of a civilized society is the way it respects its citizens’ rights. At the end of the 18th century, a time of revolution, philosophers defined what they regarded as the basic human rights that the laws of society should protect. But it was not until much later that it was recognized that these should apply to everyone equally.

人权

The rights of man

美国和法国的革命运动试图推翻那些被视为不公正和压迫的统治者。在这些统治者倒台后，公民们在约翰·洛克和让-雅克·卢梭等哲学家的启发下，从头开始组织新社会。他们对社会治理模式的核心是承认某些基本权利。美国《独立宣言》呼应了洛克的观点，有一句名言：“我们认为这些真理是不言而喻的：人人生而平等，造物主赋予他们若干不可剥夺的权利，其中包括生命权、自由权和追求幸福的权利。”在法国，《人权和公民权宣言》明确规定了人人生而平等，在法律面前人人平等，并享有自由、安全和财产的权利。这些权利被认为是文明社会的最低要求。

The revolutionary movements in America and France sought to overthrow what were seen as unjust and oppressive rulers. With these rulers gone, the citizens were able to organize their new societies from scratch, inspired by philosophers such as John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Central to their vision of how society should be governed was the recognition of certain fundamental rights. Echoing Locke, the US Declaration of Independence famously states: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” And in France, the principle that all men are equal by nature and before the law, and have the right to liberty, security, and property, was made clear in the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. These rights were considered the minimum requirement for a civilized society.

妇女权利

The rights of woman

这些宣言建立了权利框架，并将之载入社会宪法。在两份文件中，平等被视为第一自然权利。但是，尽管它们被视为人权立法的基础，平等原则在实践中的作用却有限。男性被认为拥有平等的权利，而女性则被有效地排除在外。奥兰普·德古热以《女权和女公民权利宣言》回应了法国的宣言，打响了争取妇女权利的战争。与此同时，玛丽·沃斯通克拉夫特的 《女权辩护》激发了一场要求赋予妇女权利的运动，特别是受教育和参与政治进程的权利。这场运动在整个 19 世纪不断发展，最终催生了西蒙娜·德·波伏娃领导的女权运动。

These declarations established a framework of rights to be enshrined in the constitution of society, and in both texts equality was seen as the first natural right. But although they are seen as the foundation of human rights legislation, the principle of equality only went so far in practice. Men were considered to have equal rights, but women were effectively excluded. Olympe de Gouges replied to the French declaration with her Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen, the opening shot in the battle for women’s rights. Meanwhile, Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman inspired a movement demanding rights for women, especially the right to education and participation in the political process. This movement grew through the 19th century, and eventually spawned the feminist movement led by Simone de Beauvoir.

公民权利

Civil rights

被排除在外的不只是妇女。即使在废除奴隶制之后，许多国家仍不认为黑人是公民。旧帝国的遗产也阻碍了殖民地（尤其是非洲）的平等，WEB Du Bois 和 Frantz Fanon 等哲学家提出了一种独特的非裔加勒比政治哲学，激发了一场民权运动，为改善美国和其他地方的平等做出了巨大贡献。发表了普世人权宣言，对南非种族隔离等压迫性政权的广泛谴责最终导致了变革。但许多国家仍然剥夺了至少部分公民在法律下的平等权利。即使在原则上承认人权的西方民主国家，人们在现实中也远未得到平等对待。

Women were not the only ones excluded. Even after the abolition of slavery, black people were not considered to be citizens in many countries. The legacy of old empires also prevented equality in the colonies, especially in Africa, and philosophers such as W. E. B. Du Bois and Frantz Fanon emerged with a specifically Afro-Caribbean political philosophy, inspiring a civil rights movement that did much to improve equality in the United States and elsewhere. Declarations of universal human rights were issued, and widespread condemnation of repressive regimes such as apartheid in South Africa led to eventual change. But many states still deny at least some of their citizens equal rights under the law. Even in Western democracies, where human rights are recognized in principle, people are treated far from equally in reality.

公民抗命

CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE

争取平等的斗争常常导致暴力，但人权运动也曾以和平手段取得成功。许多最有效的运动，如甘地反对英国在印度统治的运动，都是基于 19 世纪哲学家亨利·梭罗的公民抗命思想。梭罗认为，通过和平抗议和不合作来抵制违背我们良知的法律不仅是我们的权利，也是我们的义务。

The fight for equality has often led to violence, but rights movements have also succeeded using peaceful means. Many of the most effective, such as Gandhi’s campaign against British rule in India, have been based on 19th-century philosopher Henry Thoreau’s idea of civil disobedience. Thoreau felt that it is not only our right, but also our duty, to resist laws that go against our conscience through peaceful protest and noncooperation.

参见：什么使社会文明？|有可能实现自由和正义吗？

See also: What makes a society CIVILIZED? | Is it possible to have FREEDOM and JUSTICE?

公民社会制定的法律反映了其文化的道德哲学。这些法律旨在确保整个社会的福祉，并保护个人的权利。然而，许多宗教认为道德是由上帝赐予的法律决定的，我们的法律应该考虑到这些戒律。

Civil societies create laws that reflect the moral philosophy of their culture. These are meant to ensure the welfare of society as a whole, and protect the rights of individuals. Many religions, however, believe that morality is dictated by god-given laws, and that our laws should take these commandments into account.

律法和诫命

Laws and commandments

道德和政治哲学起源于古希腊，当时人们认为道德和政治哲学与宗教大体上是分开的，神灵与制定道德规则或社会法律几乎没有关系。但随着基督教的出现，宗教再次对欧洲社会的法律产生了巨大影响，伊斯兰教后来也对中东社会产生了类似的影响。这些宗教教导人们，道德不是由理性来判断的，而是由诫命决定的，诫命是上帝不可侵犯的法律。虽然伊斯兰教对社会结构给出了更明确的指示，但基督教哲学家面临的问题是，如何将上帝的道德法则与人类为确保公民社会的利益而制定的法律相协调。这一点变得尤为重要，因为中世纪教会成为一股政治力量，君主和教皇被认为拥有神圣的统治权。

Moral and political philosophy had its origins in ancient Greece, where it was seen as largely separate from religion, and the gods had little to do with determining the rules of morality or the laws governing society. But with the advent of Christianity, religion once again had a huge impact on the laws of society in Europe, and Islam later had a similar influence on society in the Middle East. These religions taught that morality is not judged by reason, but dictated by commandments, which are the inviolable laws of God. While Islam gave more explicit instructions on the structure of society, Christian philosophers faced the problem of squaring God’s laws of morality with the laws devised by humans to ensure the benefits of civil society. This became especially important as the Church became a political power during medieval times, and monarchs and popes were thought to have a divine right to rule.

上帝之城

The city of God

最早的基督教哲学家之一是希波的奥古斯丁，他在皈依基督教之前曾研究过希腊哲学。他利用柏拉图的观点，即我们生活的世界，即表象世界，仅仅是理想世界（形式世界）的反映，并认为尘世社会是上帝王国的反映。我们的国家和城市并不完美，由不完美的人为法律统治，但都是以理想的“上帝之城”为蓝本。上帝赋予我们理性的力量，让我们了解上帝之城的法律，并赋予我们自由，让我们可以以此为蓝本制定自己的法律。托马斯·阿奎那后来提出，上帝的永恒法则包括他所谓的自然法，基于人类固有的道德、美德和价值观。自然法构成了尘世社会法律的基础，但它并不完整，只是上帝法律的一部分。

Among the earliest Christian philosophers was Augustine of Hippo, who had studied Greek philosophy before converting to Christianity. He used Plato’s idea that the world we live in, the world of appearances, is merely a reflection of an ideal world (the world of forms), and argued that earthly society is a reflection of the kingdom of God. Our states and cities are imperfect, and governed by imperfect human-made laws, but are modeled on an ideal “city of God.” God has given us the power of reason to access knowledge of the laws of the city of God, and the freedom to model our own laws on them. Thomas Aquinas later suggested that God’s eternal laws include what he called Natural Law, based on the morals, virtues, and values inherent in humans. Natural Law formed the basis for the laws of earthly society, but is incomplete, being only a part of God’s law.

“上帝已死”

“God is dead”

中世纪之后，教会失去了大部分政治控制权。那些由神权赋予权力的统治者被推翻，独立于教会的国家建立起来。在此过程中，上帝赋予的法律的权威受到质疑，取而代之的是建立在实用性和人类道德基础上的政府制度。政治哲学再次与宗教大体分离，到 19 世纪，许多哲学家公开反对宗教。卡尔·马克思将宗教视为“人民的鸦片”——一种控制和压迫的手段，阻碍了政治进步——而在 19 世纪末，弗里德里希·尼采通过宣称“上帝已死”指出犹太-基督教道德哲学与现代世界无关。但今天仍然存在着法律源自宗教法律（神权政治）的社会，甚至现代世俗民主国家也建立在从宗教历史中继承下来的原则之上。

After the Middle Ages, the Church lost much of its political control. Rulers whose power was given by a divine right were toppled, and states independent of the Church were established. In the process, the authority of God-given laws was questioned, and systems of government based on practicalities and human morality took its place. Political philosophy once again became largely separate from religion, and by the 19th century many philosophers were openly opposed to religion. Karl Marx saw religion as the “opium of the people”—a means of control and oppression, which prevented political progress—and, at the close of the century, Friedrich Nietzsche pointed out the irrelevance of Judeo-Christian moral philosophy to the modern world by declaring that “God is dead.” But societies still exist today whose laws are derived from religious laws (theocracies), and even modern secular democracies are built on principles inherited from their religious past.

正义战争？

A JUST WAR?

基督教和伊斯兰教都是爱好和平的宗教，其教义禁止杀戮和战斗。然而，这两种宗教都承认捍卫宗教的必要性，也承认正义战争的存在。基督教和伊斯兰教哲学家对战争的正义性要求得出了类似的结论：正当意图、正当理由、正当权威，以及只在万不得已的情况下使用战争。

Christianity and Islam are peace-loving religions, and killing and fighting are forbidden by their scriptures. Yet both faiths recognize the need to defend their religion and the existence of such a thing as a just war. Christian and Islamic philosophers came to similar conclusions about the requirements for a war to be just: rightful intention, just cause, proper authority, and the use of war only as a last resort.

参见：知识源于推理|推理和信仰兼容吗 ？

See also: Knowledge comes from REASONING | Are REASON and FAITH compatible?

科学的进步增加了我们对世界的了解，带来了许多好处。现在，我们比以往任何时候都更有能力控制自然界，为自己谋利。然而，许多好处都是有代价的，我们应该考虑这种科学进步的道德影响。

Advances in the sciences have increased our knowledge of the world, bringing many benefits. Now, more than ever before, we are able to control the natural world to our advantage. Many of these advantages come at a cost, however, and we should consider the moral implications of this scientific progress.

涉足DNA

科学改变了我们的生活方式：我们可以克隆动物，可以治愈疾病。但这一切什么时候会变得不道德呢？有些人担心，涉足像生物体这样不可预测的东西可能会给自然环境带来灾难性和不可逆转的变化。

Science has transformed the way we live: We can clone animals, and we can cure diseases. But at what point does all this become unethical? Some fear that dabbling with things as unpredictable as living organisms could potentially introduce disastrous and irreversible changes into the natural environment.

科学的道德

The morality of science

道德上正确与错误的问题与政治和法律密切相关，但道德哲学与科学的相关性则不那么明显。可以说，科学研究和发现既不是道德的也不是不道德的，而是我们如何利用它们决定了它们在道德上是好是坏。例如，现代物理学解释了能量和物质之间的关系，但这种知识使我们能够制造核电站和核武器。但即使是纯粹的科学研究也涉及一些道德决策。例如，有些人想知道，当世界上如此多的人口生活在极端贫困中时，在太空探索上投入巨额资金是否在道德上站得住脚。有时，当科学家和工程师发现他们的发现的用途使我们能够更好地控制我们的世界时——例如种植转基因作物以应对粮食短缺——这些被描述为“非自然的”，而我们对自然现象的操纵则是“扮演上帝”。

Questions of what is morally right and wrong are closely connected to politics and the law, but moral philosophy has a less obvious relevance to science. It can be argued that scientific research and discoveries are neither moral nor immoral, but that it is what uses we make of them that determines whether they are morally good or bad. Modern physics, for example, explains such things as the relationship between energy and matter, yet this knowledge has allowed us to make nuclear power plants and nuclear weapons. But even pure scientific research involves some ethical decisions. For example, some people wonder whether or not it is morally defensible to spend vast sums of money on space exploration when so much of the world’s population lives in extreme poverty. Sometimes, when scientists and engineers find uses for their discoveries that give us more control over our world—such as growing genetically modified crops to combat food shortages—these are described as “unnatural,” and our manipulation of natural phenomena as “playing God.”

生死攸关的决定

Life-and-death decisions

尽管扮演上帝的想法源自许多宗教所宣扬的道德观，但即使是一些非宗教人士也认为有些事情我们不应该插手。例如，在医学上，我们经常需要做出生死攸关的决定，这会带来道德困境。安乐死，或“仁慈杀戮”，与宗教戒律和法律相抵触，但在某些情况下，人们可能认为结束一个人的痛苦是正当的。反对者利用“扮演上帝”的论点，说一个人夺走另一个人的生命总是错误的——但这提出了一个问题：让一个人在痛苦中死去，而不是仁慈地结束他们的生命，在道德上是否正确。随着医学科学为我们提供了延长生命的方法——例如，能够让我们活下去的机器——这种道德困境变得越来越普遍。医生和亲属经常必须决定是否应该关闭病人的生命支持系统。并且有人可能会说，使用机器来挽救一个本来会死去的人的生命也是“扮演上帝”。

Although the idea of playing God is derived from the morality dictated by many religions, even some nonreligious people feel that there are some things we should not meddle with. In medicine, for example, we often need to make life-and-death decisions, which pose ethical dilemmas. Euthanasia, or “mercy killing,” conflicts with both religious commandments and the law, but in some cases, people may feel it is justified to put an end to a person’s suffering. Opponents, using the “playing God” argument, say it is always wrong for a person to take another person’s life—but this raises the question of whether or not it is morally right to leave someone to die in pain, rather than bring their life to a merciful end. This kind of ethical dilemma is becoming increasingly common as medical science provides us with ways of extending our lives—for example, machines that are capable of keeping us alive. Doctors and relatives often have to decide if a patient’s life support should be switched off. And it could be argued that using a machine to keep someone alive who would otherwise be dead is also “playing God.”

塑造我们的环境

Shaping our environment

其他科学也给我们带来了道德困境。虽然医学现在使​​我们能够延长生命或无痛地结束生命，但基因工程使我们有能力改变甚至创造生命。为人类提供可靠的食物来源和开发抗击疾病的方法（例如通过动物试验）的好处提供了一些道德上的正当性。同样，技术为我们创造了一个安全舒适的环境，但越来越多的科学家和哲学家认为我们的一些行为是错误的，不是因为它们违反了道德法则，而是因为它们对环境产生了意想不到的后果。虽然我们的意图——让人们生活得更好——可能是好的，但这些技术进步会影响我们的环境，从长远来看，可能是破坏性的。挪威环保哲学家阿恩·纳斯是第一批提出我们应该作为自然界平等的一部分生活，应该“像山一样思考”的人之一——不仅要考虑对人类甚至其他动物的利弊，还要考虑整个环境的长期利益。

Other sciences also present us with ethical dilemmas. While medicine now enables us to extend life or end it painlessly, genetic engineering gives us the power to modify and even create life. The benefits to humankind of providing a reliable source of food and developing ways of combating disease—for example, through animal testing—give some moral justification. Similarly, technology has created a safe and comfortable environment for us, but a growing number of scientists and philosophers are arguing that some of our actions are wrong, not because they break a moral law, but because of their unintended environmental consequences. Although our intentions—to make life better for people—may be good, these technological advances affect our environment and, in the long run, may be destructive. Norwegian environmentalist philosopher Arne Naess was among the first to suggest that we should live as an equal part of the natural world and should “think like a mountain”—considering not just the benefits and harm to people, or even other animals, but the long-term interests of the environment as a whole.

诫命

COMMANDMENTS

上帝赐予的戒律决定人类道德的观念在西方文化中根深蒂固，当我们将生死攸关的决定视为“扮演上帝”时，这种观念就隐含其中。但是，法律是上帝所命令的，因为它们在道德上是好的，还是因为它们是上帝所命令的，所以它们在道​​德上是好的？

The idea that God-given commandments determine human morality is deeply ingrained in Western culture, and is implied when we talk of life-and-death decisions as “playing God.” But are laws commanded by God because they are morally good, or are they morally good because they are commanded by God?

哲学家们对美或艺术的理解——美学——与对道德的理解大体相同。有些人试图定义美和艺术的属性，而另一些人则认为对这些品质的欣赏取决于文化，或者只是品味问题。

Philosophers have approached the subject of what is considered beautiful or artistic—aesthetics—in much the same way as they have approached morality. Some have tried to define the properties of beauty and art, while others have suggested that appreciation of these qualities depends on culture, or is simply a matter of taste.

什么让事物变得美丽？

What makes something beautiful?

苏格拉底提出的一个看似简单的问题是“什么是美？”他不仅在寻求这个词的定义，而且试图找出是否有某种特定的属性使某物变得美丽——所有美丽事物中都固有的某种属性。他的学生柏拉图认为，存在一种理想美，它存在于一个完美形式的理想世界（与我们生活的世界不同），我们用这个理想来衡量我们认为美的东西。然而，亚里士多德认为，我们对美的构成的看法是从我们对所有我们认为美的不同事物的体验中形成的。但人们对美的看法却大相径庭，所以也许美不是事物的固有品质；相反，它是“在旁观者的眼中”——一个品味或观点的问题。相对主义哲学家认为，美的观念是由文化和传统塑造的。例如，大多数人都认为他们家乡的风景很美，不管那风景是什么。

One of the seemingly simple questions that Socrates asked was “What is beauty?” He was not just seeking a definition of the word, but trying to see if there is some specific property that makes something beautiful—something inherent in all things that are beautiful. His pupil Plato argued that there is such a thing as ideal beauty, which exists in an ideal world of perfect forms (separate from the world we live in), and that we measure what we consider to be beautiful against that ideal. Aristotle, however, believed that we have developed our ideas of what constitutes beauty from our experience of all the different things we find beautiful. But people have very different ideas of what is beautiful, so perhaps beauty is not an inherent quality of things; rather, it is “in the eye of the beholder”—a matter of taste or opinion. Relativist philosophers suggest that ideas of beauty are shaped by culture and tradition. For example, most people consider the landscape of their homeland beautiful, regardless of what that landscape is.

喜欢你所看到的吗？

哲学家们试图确定一件艺术作品是否本身就很美，或者是否是我们个人对该作品的体验才让它变得美丽。

Philosophers have tried to establish whether a work of art is beautiful in its own right, or whether it is our individual experience of that work that makes it beautiful.

不同的时间和地点

Different times and places

我们可以发现人类创造的事物（例如艺术品）和自然界的美。柏拉图很少花时间研究艺术，认为艺术是对理想美的苍白模仿。另一方面，亚里士多德认为艺术是自然及其美的体现，不仅给我们带来乐趣，也给我们带来洞察力。其他人认为艺术是文化和传统的产物，在不同的时间和地点，人们认为艺术美或艺术意义是不同的。例如，古典希腊（柏拉图和亚里士多德时代）创作了伟大的诗歌、戏剧、音乐、建筑和艺术作品，它们表现出某些共同的特征——尤其是比例、对称、平衡和和谐。这些不仅反映了自然，还反映了重视理性思维、数学、逻辑和社会秩序的文化传统。但其他文化反映了对自然世界的不同解读，产生了截然不同的艺术表达风格，以及对艺术作品价值的不同看法。

We find beauty in things that are made by humans, such as works of art, as well as in the natural world. Plato had little time for the arts, and considered them to be a pale imitation of the ideal form of beauty. Aristotle, on the other hand, saw them as a reflection of nature and the instances of beauty in it, giving us insight as well as pleasure. Others believe that the arts are a product of culture and tradition, and that what is considered artistically beautiful or meaningful has been different at different times and in different places. For example, Classical Greece (the time of Plato and Aristotle) produced great works of poetry, theater, music, architecture, and art, which displayed certain common characteristics—notably proportion, symmetry, balance, and harmony. These reflected not just nature, but a cultural tradition that valued rational thought, math, logic, and social order. But other cultures reflect different interpretations of the natural world, producing very different styles of artistic expression, and different notions of what constitutes the value of a work of art.

客观评价？

An objective appraisal?

现代艺术家挑战了我们对艺术的传统观念。有时，公众会对前卫艺术家的作品感到困惑，并质疑这是否应该被称为艺术。一种传统观点认为，艺术是某人为了传达某种想法或情感而创作的东西——但寻找这种意图可能会影响我们对艺术的看法。作家兼哲学家苏珊·桑塔格认为，评价一件艺术品应该根据其本身的优点，而不要考虑艺术家的意图。定义艺术的另一种方法是根据该领域所谓的专家赋予它的价值（参见名字意味着什么？）。简而言之，这只是一个观点或品味的问题。如果是这样的话，也许根本不存在评价一件艺术品的客观方法。

Modern artists have challenged our conventional ideas of what art is. Sometimes, the public is baffled by the work of avant-garde artists, and question if it should be called art at all. One traditional view is that art is something that is made by someone with the intention of conveying an idea or emotion—but looking for such intentions may color our opinion of it. Writer and philosopher Susan Sontag thought that a work of art should be appraised on its own merits, ignoring the artist’s intentions. An alternative way to define art is by the value placed on it by so-called experts in the field (see What’s in a name?). In short, it is simply a matter of opinion or taste. And if that’s the case, perhaps there is no objective way to appraise a work of art.

名字意味着什么？

WHAT’S IN A NAME?

如果某位著名艺术家的一幅画作被认为是他或她的最佳作品，但后来发现是赝品，或者是出自一个不太出色的画家之手，那么它的货币价值就会下降，人们也不再认为它那么伟大。画作依然如旧，只是我们给它贴上的“标签”变了——但这似乎凌驾于其他衡量它是否伟大的标准之上。

If a painting by a famous artist, considered an example of his or her best work, turns out to be a fake, or the work of a lesser painter, its monetary value drops and it is no longer considered so great. The picture remains the same; only the “label” we attach to it has changed—yet this appears to override other criteria for considering it great.

参见：知识来自推理|对与错：一切都是相对的……

See also: Knowledge comes from REASONING | RIGHT and WRONG: It’s all relative…